Chiff and Fipple Forums

Does somebody have a clue about the Taylors´ reason for putting their conical staples the other way round?

Apparently good for the back d, hard D, and second octave.

From C&F uilleann forum thread: Reverse taper staple - Thu Apr 07, 2005:

"I think the Taylors were simply trying to keep the throat of the chanter small, which helps bring on the hard D. Craig wrote me about the Taylor design being very unusual in certain respects, I wish he come out of hiding and share some more of his knowledge about these things." Kevin Rietmann


"The reverse taper produces the best bottom D of any of the staples. It also improves the back D and the sometimes the 2nd octave. Also, with the wider staple head the reed is less likely to split. Somewhere along the line I went over to a straight staple which I use today. I cannot for the life of me remember why I gave up the reverse staple..... actually..... I think I'll try it again." Pat Sky

"The thing with the Touhy staple that Geoff has is that it actually has a double taper, its narrow at the head, widen's out then narrows down at the end again. Geoff can't figure out how it was made !!! " Rory Bellows

Thank´s, Thomas. I have one here that I´m going to reed. I´ll "report".

Steampacket wrote:Apparently good for the back d, hard D, and second octave.

From C&F uilleann forum thread: Reverse taper staple - Thu Apr 07, 2005:



"The thing with the Touhy staple that Geoff has is that it actually has a double taper, its narrow at the head, widen's out then narrows down at the end again. Geoff can't figure out how it was made !!! " Rory Bellows

I think Rory's quote misinterprets what I may have said. Of course the staple has a double taper i.e. it tapers down towards the eye end in one plane but tapers outwards towards the eye end in the other plane. This makes it very tricky to form around mandrels that have the exact internal shape. I'm refering to the Taylor staples that were made ( by them ?) for the Patsy Touhey set.

Recently I made some staples for C and B chanters using 3mm ID brass tubing with a 0.5mm wall thickness. By annealing the tube and gently beating on the mandrel until the eye was quite wide with a fairly closed mouth , probably 4.6 x 1.1... I started to get those reverse cone staple effects mentioned above . So, as Chris Bailey suggested to me, perhaps one does not NEED to make a reverse cone staple blank or exagerate the conicity for those chanters that appear to prefer reeds made this way.
I suggest trying a wide eye, but fairly closed, and tie onto it a TAPERED HEAD, where the head width at the eye end of the staple is hardly wider that the staple eye.... thus the cavity transition , from head to staple , has little or no 'dead' pockets.

Thanks Geoff for the detailed clarification.

report now:
Yes, the hard D sounds notably stronger than others, the back D is very stable and the second octave is very "in tune" - of course you need the original chanter. Drawback however: Even after a few "attempts" the reeds won´t reach c´´ and d´´´. Well - you don´t need these notes in a session. Question though: Is it just me or are these notes indeed more difficult to reach with reeds of this "making form"? (and what could be "changed"?)

Anyone have pictures of these staples ?

Geoff--- if I understand your post correctly, the width of the cane at the staple is little more than 5mm and tapers up to the regular width of the head of the reed. Are these the usual length? Have you ever tried one of these in a modern chanter?