Chiff and Fipple Forums

The always-inspiring Padraig McGovern has a special set of regs. It sounds like he has a tenor D as well as a tenor -or baritone- E on this set (listen to the melodic reg break):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=64wMUVoKMjc

Anyone know anything about this set?

Hi,

The only thing what I hear whats is not standard is the 4th drone. All the rest is in his very long special tumb.

Patrick

...but I hear an E note in there.

Anyone know the name of the second tune?

tommykleen wrote:...but I hear an E note in there.

Indeed yes...

The set has an extra note on each of the regs - a D' on the tenor, an E on the baritone and a C# on the bass. It also has 5 drones, an A drone and another that can be tuned to either A or G.
The set was made by the late Victor Mullally. Having seen it in person, it's a beautiful set and it has been referred to as Victor's 'Master Set'.

That's very interesting. Do you know where the extra keys are placed on the keyboard? I can think of few ways that they could be laid out effectively, but a lot depends on where that E on the Bari reg goes...

The E is between the D and the F# on the baritone with the D key shortened a bit. It is still possible to play a D&F# chord as well as a D&G chord but the option is now there for E&G to be played as well as E&A.

The D' is positioned above the C on the baritone and the C# is above the C on the bass.

Very cool. Thanks for the info. I thought perhaps the E was added to the baritone above the D and everything shifted up one position so the A would line up with the extra keys at the top of the tenor and bass regs. Would yield some interesting chords that way as well, but you would lose some important ones too. Slippery slope trying to ‘improve’ the regs...

I vaguely recall someone once suggested a kind-of free reed assemblage to replace the regs. I guess something like that might really open-up the chordal possibilities. On the downside I think free reeds tend to get louder when the air pressure goes up so maybe the idea would be more suited to something like the Northumbrian pipes. As it happens, I notice that inventor and Northumbrian pipemaker Mike Nelson is currently working on improving the design of the piano accordian and has been busy disassembling one of those plastic mouth-blown Melodicas. So who knows what might result? Now where's my hard-hat?

Free reeds play at a tiny fraction of the pressure that uilleann pipes (or northumbrian pipes) play at.