Think the main trade-off is expense?s1m0n wrote:But the OP should understand that there is a trade-off to tackling drones early, and that that's why practice sets exist in the first place.
Not from the uilleann pipe world, but the LBPS hires out single-drone Scottish smallpipe sets made by Richard Evans. That's what got me started (briefly) on SSP before I got my standard Ian Kinnear and Lochalsh Pipes sets, but AFAIK they're unique in the SSP world. Sometimes I still practice smallpipes or border pipes with just one or two drones (occasionally even performing that way), but couldn't recommend an inability to play with drones at all as useful to anyone. For sure there's some equivalence in the GHB 'goose', but I don't know how widely they're still used.