Some long standing forum members may remember me from a while back when I ordered a Davy Stephenson kit set, right before he dropped off the map.
Well…a few PMs later (many thanks Uillam) I got in touch with him (I’ve moved around a bit since then), and yesterday, this dropped through my letterbox:
So I took myself down to the post office and found…this:
It had well wrapped packages within, bearing a stern admonition:
They contained these goodies:
I was concerned to discover the chanter had a number of holes in it, but Heather Clarke assures me it’s meant to be that way:
In all seriousness, it is a very nice piece of workmanship. It’s still early in the morning, so I haven’t tried the chanter properly yet (watch this space for a clip), but a quick honk seems pretty comfortably balanced and set at a nice pressure.
As you may have noticed, it didn’t arrive in a kit form in the end - the reason was, as Davy explained to me a while ago, that on second thoughts he was worried about badly put together set going second hand and people not realising what they were - hence casting aspersions on his workmanship.
The chanter is South American Rosewood, I’m not sure what any of the rest is. It is a very attractive and nicely made set - more attractive than the Howard set I had for a while.
DJM, I do a fair bit of GHBing-for-hire on the side, so my contact details are pretty liberally splattered on the web anyway. Besides, I have a ferocious cat which will fall asleep as soon as it sniffs a burglar.
I have to say that I’ve never seen an unattractive Howard set. Like most professional musical instrument makers, his pipes are a work of art and a thing of beauty
When someone writes South American Rosewood, is that the same as Brazilian rosewood ( I have an ancient Gibson 12 string with that wood on the back and sides), or, are there multiple species??? Curious…
