I have a a question for those experienced reedmakers. What is the effect of having a smaller tubing staple for a chanter. I’ve heard that it makes for a flatter sounding reed.
In the pipes I’ve got, almost everytime, 9/10 I seem to have a sharper upper octave especially High G and up. The tubing I am now trying ( newly) is going to be 4mm OD.
Anyone have suggestions?
upiper
Stick with the same diameter tubing you’ve been using, and try lengthening your staple by oe or two 10ths of an inch. Also, try extending the length of the taper of the staple. I had a similar problem with the high B and C# on my stick, and when I pulled apart the reed made that came with the chanter (which didn’t have these problems quite so much) found that the length of the taper was about 10 mm longer than what I had been using.
The theory is that narrower tubing flattens the second octave, but if the staple was made by the maker of the pipes, they probably made it to suit the chanter and so you might want to stick with it. An experiment you could try is to manaully alter its diameter with rushes. this is done by taking a length of wire (usually the length of the staple) and bending a ‘U’ shape into one end so that it snugly holds itself in the staple. You can easily fish it out if it doesn’t work. Otherwise, you can try veried lengths of thin rolled paper in the staple. If you want to try narrowing particular points within the staple, you can wrap tiny bits of PTFE tape on the rush.
Good luck.
Well thanks for the replies guys.
The problem I was having was trying to emulate an exact match in tone for the Robbie Hughes chanter I have. Although the fellow who made it was great making the reed it seems a little sharp in the 2nd OCT. but I’ve since rushed it with a ‘G’ bango string which levelled off the ‘G’ and up.
Again..Thank You.
upiper71