Here's another weird one:

I've got a home-made chanter reed that's never been quite right, but it's close enough that I haven't yet chucked it into the "Maybe for Regulators" box. It's strident, almost obnoxiously bright, and has an especially unstable back D (helped somewhat by tape), but it plays easily across both octaves, and other than the back D it's nicely in tune with itself, and even has a nice hard D.

The real problem is, it's unstable. After 5-10 minutes of play, the tone devolves to something approaching a goose's honk, it goes way out of tune, and the chanter actually shakes: the whole thing vibrates sympathetically with the reed!

I've trimmed the reed's tip a couple of times over the past 36 hours or so (I let it "settle in" for 12 hrs. after the first trim before concluding it needed a second trim). That reduced the honkiness and pitch-swings a little but not entirely: I still get reed-quakes (for lack of a better term).

Besides trimming, I've mainly been trying to address this with bridle movement & adjustment. What am I missing?

Note that I have a second self-made reed that sounds much sweeter and has a better back D (after correction by tape); for a couple of months it was even my primary reed. But nowadays it too starts to veer out of tune and to vibrate the entire chanter after warming up, albeit not as severely as the other reed does. I've suspected bridle-movement is the culprit on the second reed, but now I'm not so sure (it has a poorly-executed wire bridle, but this is held fairly firmly in place by two blobs of window rope-caulk).

Thanks for any reactions, guesses, or insight any of you can offer,
Mick

Maybe it's the climate and not the reed. SAD! Seasonal Affected Disorder. It goes after reeds too.

It sounds like your bridle is loosening up/sliding. Try securing it in place with a few wraps. Are you using a clip bridle or a wire (wrapped) bridle? Try one or the other.

Try squeezing (and holding) the lips open too. You may borrow my vice if you are brave.

Success! Mr. Klein was correct, in both cases the solution was further futzing with the bridle. With the one I got working last night, I fixed the goose-honking by moving the bridle down and pinching the reed flatter (making the aperture smaller).

Sure enough, after playing a bit, it slipped back upwards, which allowed the reed to open up. The fix then was to apply a bigger blob of window-caulk than I'd been trying previously -- this time I used a 4mm diameter blob. It isn't pretty, but it's solved the problem, and the reed sounds great.

Thanks, Tom!

--Mick

Hi Mick, I had a reed that was suffering the same problems as yours going out of tune as I played. Sometimes it would vibrate clean off. I tried squeezing the bridle, but that would dull the tone. I tried wrapped wire but that opened up the lips too much. The reed needed just a very gentle embrace from the bridle to attain good tone and great tuning over the two octaves. It was driving me nuts!
Then i read of your success so I tried something similar to keep the reed from riding up. I found a small round rubber washer which I slide up the reed and over the bridle... And it works fantastically.
It's keeping the bridle in the reeds sweet spot, but does seem to have any negative effect on the reeds tone.

So thanks, I now have a great reed.

Cool solution, Phil! We have to take what comfort we can in small successes, no?