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A fellow in our Pipe Band plays a set.
They're lovely looking. The shapes of the mounts are much more traditional and elegant than the modern boxy McCallum style.
The CNC engraving on the alloy ferrules is the nicest I've seen on pipes. So much CNC engraving looks like graphic design clip-art. On the MacRae pipes the CNC engraving looks more traditional.
The drones have a big rich tone.
One thing to be aware of is that McCallum copied the bore specs on Liddell's original MacRaes including the fact that the two tenors had different specs.
I've owned several 100+ year old pipes and this feature was common. AFAIK McCallum is the first modern maker to do it.
Back in the day of cane drone reeds it wasn't an issue. Cane is infinitely variable and you would go through dozens of reeds finding the exact perfect reed for each of your three drones. Having the two tenors vary wouldn't matter one bit; they're never exactly the same anyhow.
But today we purchase synthetic drone reed sets and the two tenor reeds are the same, meaning that while they might work fine in one tenor they might not be ideal for the other tenor.
This is what's happened to the guy in our band. One of his tenors is fine, the other is wonky. It's finicky about striking in.
I told him it would be a matter of thinking of his tenors as individual instruments, and that he will probably end up with two different makes of tenor drone reeds.
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Richard Cook
1978 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle
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