I’m thinking of getting a highland practice chanter but it looks like there’s a
lot of crappy ones pumped out of the middle east, I want something of enough quality that it won’t be a hindrance to learning tunes.
please let me know of a decent practice chanter
thanks
Having replaced a c.25-year old poly ‘Shepherd’ (which, being badly tuned and uncomfortably hard to blow, I’ve long suspected of being a ‘changeling’) with a Gibson long (also in poly) this summer, I’d strongly recommend the Gibson… well tuned, nice to blow and genuinely fun to play where I’d just get out the pipes rather than suffer the other one!
I find MacCallum long PCs recommendable, too, and very favourably priced.
[old thread alert]
I have McCallum and Gibson. They’re both good. If I was going to get one today, it would be Soutar. Same quality for less money. It’s really hard to mess up a practice chanter, but they manage in Pakistan. Avoid those.
Most practice chanters (I’m talking about good ones made by legitimate Highland pipemakers) play more or less the same: they’re purposely designed to have a high backpressure, having a very narrow bore, which gives them a certain kazoolike tone. I have an old practice chanter from the 1940s and it’s like that too. It’s just the traditional way practice chanters have always been made. My theory is that they were designed to have extremely high backpressure in order to build up the lip strength of the beginner- there’s no acoustic reason for an instrument which puts out a volume that low to require that much pressure to play.
I have a McCallum Long and it plays very nicely, but it’s a traditional-style practice chanter.
The Gibson Long practice chanters are quite different: they seem to be based on a smallpipe chanter rather than a traditional practice chanter, having a different bore and using a short wide reed like a Northumbrian Smallpipe reed, and they are much more freeblowing (that is, less backpressure) and have a clearer more musical tone. They’re also considerably louder than traditional practice chanters. I think they’re the best practice chanters around.
Here’s what two Gibson long practice chanters sound like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4lw8-3Jf9w
But! I can’t use one with the pipe band, because they’re all playing McCallum Longs and Naill Longs etc which play very flat, around halfway between B flat and A (around 450 to 455 cycles) and my Gibsons want to play at around Concert B flat, 466.
Very interesting clip, funny enough… I had an idea to make just such a beast after someone showed me the same sort of trick with two whistles. Those Gibson pcs do have a small piping sound.
Thanks
McCallum.