Tenor Drone

[paintedgreen]

I have been having a little bit of trouble with my drones lately. They didn't respond very well to pressure when I got them no matter how well they were tuned. Since I've had them they've seemed to get worse. Today I decided to hold a tuner up to them to see exactly what the problem was and found that as I increase pressure on the bag, the tenor drone becomes sharper and the baritone and bass become flatter. With the tenor stopped, the other two stay together fairly well. I'm not sure if this is normal for the tenor, but it definitely doesn't sound good to me. Maybe it's time for a new reed? Is there anything I can do?

Thanks

[andymay]

Hi

If the drone gets sharper under pressure, shorten the tongue. If it gets flatter, lengthen it. Do this by moving the bridles up or down. It's possible to get them really pretty resilient to changes in pressure in terms of pitch this way.

Next of course you may find that they don't tune to the correct notes anymore, so you can start messing around with blobs of wax.

In your case i'd try shortening the tenor tongue and adding a weight to the tip of it for starters.

Good luck!

A

[Hans-Joerg]

First but - check whether the reed sits tight in its socket. It can (can) wobble itself loose by the ("standing") soundwaves. Imagine the power of resonating waves - even glasses can be broken by singing or bridges by the wind. However - don´t use glue but s. th. removable like e.g. sticky wax.

[paintedgreen]

Thanks, I'll be sure to try both those things.