Hi list,
on my C chanter, the first octave E (or D, actually) is very sharp. I play it with x|xxx|xxoo on-knee, alternate fingerings like x|xxx|xxox off-knee etc. are all way too sharp. Otherwise the reed plays really well with a lovely mellow tone and the best back D I ever encountered on any chanter. Second octave E is in tune with a good tone. Hard E is sharp.
Ideas?
Thanks in advance!
Try taping the top of the top of the E hole… that’s the ring finger of the bottom hand hole, the second one up form the bottom.
PD.
…nice avatar there Fr. Pat. What is that beautiful object? 
tommykleen
Looks like an intake valve/cover for a set of bellows.
Oh, they are so much more than that.
But back on topic. The Es live in the scrape area if I recall. If you are anything like me (and I know I am) than you might have a bit of the winter doldrums (reed collapsing with the lack of humidity making this area smaller).
What does your reed/pipe maker advise?
T
…the first octave E is very sharp… Second octave E is in tune with a good tone.
Patrick, putting tape on his E will fix low E, but then his high E will be flat. (At least that’s how it works on my chanter.)
On just about all D chanters anyway, the low E is sharper than high E. If not fixable by reed design/adjustment, it means the player has to come up with some strategy.
For years I had my E placed so that it was in the middle, a compromise, the same amount sharp in the low octave as it was flat in the upper octave. I would back off on low E and give some extra pressure on high E to bring it up.
But now I’ve got to the place of having my high E just about up to pitch (a flat upper E drives fiddlers crazy, as that note is an open string for them) which makes my low E rather sharp, and I’ve got used to veiling low E with my ring finger to bring the pitch down. (On slower stuff at least.)
One pipemaker/reedmaker was telling me how easy it was to fix this problem…but then I heard several of his chanters, all reeded by himself, which all had this problem! Maybe not so easy to fix after all…
Hard E is sharp.
You’re using “hard bottom E” in the same way as “hard bottom D”? I suppose that would be sharp perhaps.
(irony and humour missed by Evil Moderator Dude…)
Thanks for your replies so far! I haven’t been able to try out taping/waxing the E hole till now, but I will tonight or tomorrow. The pipe-/reedmaker doesn’t advise anything, because I’m both of them. The chanter is designed following a layout made by Davy Stephenson. Built and reeded by me. On my other chanters, E never was much of a problem (on my concert D, it was, but a different sort of thing which could be solved easily with a bit of cardboard), so I’m tapping in the dark more or less.
I’ll try your tips and will report back. Thanks again!
Ain’t it purty!? I think the technical name is “Air Sucker”? I could be wrong.
PD.
Since you’re the maker, you can experiment with various things like putting the E hole/holes at an angle. One maker told me that he found that this helped the sharp low E problem a bit.
The problem (mostly) is in the reed. The cavity directly above the staple-eye either is too small or too big. I´m not too sure any more. Ask Andreas.