What to do? Fix it or put up with it [title amended - Mod]?

[Brazenkane]

I was having what turned out to be an interesting conversation about modifying chanters. Obviously, we in this community know it is a no-no to modify a living maker's work, and in some instances this extends to dead makers work too. Fine.

Now, what is someone supposed to do after they've purchased an instrument that half-works, or lets just say it doesn't work correctly. Barring something that happened after the building process (I once purchased a chanter that shifted dramatically, went back to the builder for correction, and all was well). What is the owner supposed to do? If the pipe maker couldn't do it right, he ain't going to be able to fix it. In some cases I know of (i've been there), the chanter came back after being "repaired," and as you can tell by the quotes, nothing good was done. So, why NOT get the chanter fixed by someone who can fix it?

Lets say it's disrespectful to have the chanter wrenched on by someone else other than the maker. Lets also say that if someone aside from the maker does repair the chanter, there is now another working chanter in the world, instead of a piece of wood that looks like a chanter ....that will undoubtably get sold to another poor soul who is now laden with money out/junk in ailment. All the while, the seller celebrates with, "I was lucky get out of that one!"

At this stage, most of us who've been around for a while, know of the makers who can take care of business. Simultaneously, there is still a fair amount of questionable gear floating around, AND it's being bought and sold on a fairly regular basis. Hmmm and I wonder why!?!?!?

Anyhow, food for thought... perhaps this'll spark a yarn, or 3..?

[Lorenzo]

I'm reminded of an interview I recently read with Chris Thile--probably the world's finest and most respected mandolin player--and what he said about modifying some of the best mandolins...like 1920's Gibson Loars:

• They are such brilliant instruments. AND — get it in playable condition... take the fingerboard off. The jig in the factory was WRONG. if you keep the thing in original condition, it's not playable! The frets up on the top end are out of tune! It drives me to distraction that people who deify these things and don't get them in playable condition and play them. They are brilliant instruments.
  
  Loar was not God. He was a very good instrument builder. Sorry. It's a little rant. "Play your Loar."
  
  I'm just going to go ahead and say keeping it original is keeping it wrong. Hey, if that's what you like... more power to ya.
  
  http://www.mandolincafe.com/news/publis ... 1436.shtml

I agree. So, I'd say fix it.

[benhall.1]

I've only just realised the irony of amending the title.

[rorybbellows]

You parted company with your hard earned beer tokens ,its now your property. If you want to drill extra holes in it ,if you want to light a fire with it ,its no one's business but yours.

RORY

[PhilD]

I agree to fixing it if you know what the problem is. I'm just curious, in what way is it broken? Nothing one of your reeds can fix obviously.

[Brazenkane]

Phil-- not so.

There are so many things that can be wrong with a chanter, drones, or regs, that great reeds won't have any bearing upon. If the bore, throat, finger holes are not done right, the best reed in the world will just amplify what's going on below it.

Imagine Jimi Hendrix's Marshall amplifier. Now imagine it going through speakers with torn cones.......

[TheSilverSpear]

That aspect of the piping community can be something of a challenge and it seems to be a unique one at that. If I had an accordion, clarinet, or fiddle with a problem, I would find the nearest accordion, clarinet, or fiddle repairer with a good reputation, and get it sorted. For that matter, my saddle, which was made in the US, required major repairs and there was no chance I was going to send the thing to the original maker in Tennessee. I took it to a guy in East Kilbride.

My drones were made by a good maker, but years of aging and abuse meant they required serious work, including rereaming. The maker is now retired, but luckily his apprentice is happy to work on his stuff and also lives in the same country as me, so no international shipping required. And he did a great job. So that was all fantastic (I would have cried a lot if I didn't live here and had to send them to the UK from North America, however). Anyway, I bought current drones a few years ago because the previous set of drones I owned also required serious work. The maker was out of the business at the time and no one else would work on them. I ended up having to get shot of them, as I was between a rock and a hard place. Original maker wasn't available and no other pipemaker would touch them.

While I can understand how a set of pipes bears the "stamp" of an individual maker more than some other instruments might, and while doing invasive surgery on someone else's set might seem like altering someone's carefully wrought artwork, I feel as though it would be beneficial for the piping community to be a bit kinder towards issues like geography. It is a musical instrument and it does have to work. And most players would probably prefer not to have to ship their instrument across the Atlantic in order to get it to work. Even if you sensibly choose a local pipemaker to make your dream set, you might move, they might move, they might quit pipemaking and buy a pub in Majorca, you just don't know.

[mirabai]

I am infamous in some circles for being willing to work on other makers' pipes. Mostly I have worked on Pakistani made pipes to make a bad investment into something that works quite well in most ways. No one seems to take issue with that. I have also made adjustments to the work of what I'll describe as amateur makers, and on rarer occasions the work of more generally respected makers. Very occasionally I have worked on instruments made by makers long since dead. Sometimes those adjustments were very minor such as adjusting the key placement for ergonomics that better suited the owner. I have often added completely reversible tuning slides to the reed seats. I have often added reversible tubing inserts into bass drones or even some of the smaller drones when the bores were strangely large rendering them unable to play steadily at pitch. I have often filed back the key blocks so they were more out of the way of the fingers. And most significantly, I have sometimes re-reamed a chanter and changed some hole positions. This last is considered absolute sacrilege by some.

Although it may be possible to get certain designs to work, it can be very challenging to reed them. Some designs have a slower taper in the top half of the chanter and then taper more quickly in the bottom half. They start and end with the usual dimensions of a 3/16" throat and 1/2" bottom end, roughly speaking, for a D chanter, but can be much smaller than a typical Rowsome style chanter between the back D and G holes. This makes the already chronic issue of breaking back D all but unavoidable and the second octave A and B will generally be sharp. Reaming the bore to something approximating a straighter taper will cure this. Often the C hole is too far "south" to accommodate an in tune C#. Moving the C hole up while making it smaller will allow for both Cs to be in tune. If the G hole is not big enough it will sometimes completely preclude getting a one finger G in the first octave let alone an in tune one. Making it bigger and moving it down very slightly cures this with no side effects, thus making staccato G's a lot easier and more satisfying.

Obviously, doing these kinds of alterations should not be done unless you are skilled and knowledgeable. The bottom line is there are many "improvements" that are simple, small and clearly have no down side. Others are more questionable but still possibly worth considering. Some are reversible, some not so much. I could talk for days about the different design issues and what I have concluded is workable or advisable or downright unworkable and why.

The state of the art of pipe making is a very non-standardized and not well understood state in many ways. In my experience, even the very best makers are not as comprehensibly knowledgable and/or capable in all the various areas required to make pipes, as they could be, myself included. Historical makers are not immune to this. If anything the best makers today are more knowledgeable than those of old. The instrument is not that old and has had precious little opportunity to evolve compared to classical instruments. In my opinion, there are many makers who, with the best of intentions, don't seem to be capable of doing what would be considered anything near professional level work for any other more standardized instrument. Personally, I have absolutely no qualms about "improving" these instruments in the interest of helping their owners chip away at the considerable challenges of learning, and reeding their instruments. Many makers are not the best players and/or are not subjecting their instruments to the rigueurs of a professional piper's life, and are thus not in a position to appreciate some of the finer points of design. For those makers who know what they're doing relatively speaking, I approach their instruments and designs more carefully, but being an experienced maker I can tell when something is worthy of improvement.

Personally, I have never made changes without the consent of the owner. And although I have sometimes tried to convince the owner of the benefits of changes to no avail, I ultimately am compelled to respect the wishes of the owner regardless of the advisability of their conclusions. I always fully explain what and why I plan on doing. Most are eager to take advantage of my knowledge. Others are more wary since they are understandably not in any position to confirm the efficacy of my claims.

I understand the concept of respecting the work of others but I am ultimately more interested in helping out the owners in getting their instruments to be more playable and enjoyable. Obviously, there are some issues which have little to no potential to undermine the integrity of the design and others that are more invasive and need to be well considered. A consultation with the maker is sometimes advisable, sometimes irrelevant. I can certainly relate to feeling concerned about anyone working on instruments I've made, but I am also not exactly inexperienced as a pipe maker, reed maker or player. And IME, one needs to accomplished at all three in order to be competent at the first.

Clearly, there are more and more makers these days that have deeply considered their designs, and many that have not. Boring out chanters made by the former is obviously questionable, but worshipping at the alter of the latter out of ignorance and fear may be understandable, but is also questionable. There also may indeed be very few makers that are in any position to even begin to judge the difference.

hmmm... a pub in Majorca...

[billh]

The vast, vast majority of modifications done to pipes are ill-considered and wrong. The people doing them never believe that, though.

Without the right reed, no chanter will work properly, and reeds are very individual things. Unfortunately, modifying a chanter to accept a "good" reed (but not the "correct" reed) is a destructive act that forever revokes the possibility of getting it to work as the maker intended. (same for regulators, drones, etc.)

I've seen so much of this that it sickens me just to think about it.

I'm not saying that makers don't make mistakes. I just know from experience that the vast majority of these cases come down to reed issues and lack of information.

[Brazenkane]

Bill,

Here's the reverse;

Here's a possible scenario:

A chanter made by a maker who doesn't play well, nor makes anything beyond thick, unresponsive, and essentially mediocre reeds. Though, HE THINKS his concert chanter is brilliant! His chanter "works well" with his reeds. However, the scale is outa whack, the E2 growls, the back isn't in tune, and will break if not fitted with that above mentioned reed. A newbie, or intermediate level players buys this stick because he hears the makers named mentioned in forums etc., by other players (who are realy not in the know, but are just parroting the guys name because it sounds good(?). The buyer simply cannot play the stick well w/o much struggle. He sends it back to the maker for a fix, the maker builds a new "excellent" reed, notices nothing wrong with the chanter, and sends it back w/his blessing. The owner is in the same place, frustrated and disappointed.

An experienced maker sees this guy struggling and can fix the issues. Does he just say, "sorry cannot help, it's against pipemaking ethics to muck w/even a poorly made chanter. You need to buy another one. I can put you on my list." OR, if he offers to work on the existing chanter..... is that wrong, or helpful...

?

[Mr.Gumby]

Basically what happened to a lot, if not most of us. My first set was by Wilkinson-McCarthy. Dan O Dowd told me he didn't foresee it was ever going to work properly so he told me to take it to a pipemaker to get it 're-worked'. The maker didn't like the idea of doing that and told me to sell the lot. I was, and with hindsight am even more so, glad he did (and didn't attempt to work on it).

[mirabai]

Well said, Bill. I agree wholeheartedly with you except to say that it has also sickened me to see all the unsuspecting pipers that have trusted their chosen pipemakers to provide them with workable instruments that have pipes that in certain ways are simply unable to play properly with any reed under any circumstances. In my experience there are many more examples of this than one might assume.

One such issue that I was originally shocked to realize but have since accepted as more common than not is that most pipers and pipemakers do not understand what goes into making drones truly steady, meaning not wavering in pitch one iota at any reasonable pressure. For me, this is a must. For most, they have never experienced it, nor do they have the slightest idea how to achieve it. I can't tell you how many people have told me their drones are steady and upon examination reveal anything but. This is indeed usually a matter of simple and predictable adjustments to the reeds. However, given that usually the problem is rising pitch with rising pressure, and that all the adjustments that cure this also raise the overall pitch as a side effect, I often have found that by the time one adjusts or makes a reed to play dead steady, the pitch can be very sharp. Most tenor and baritone drones have the slide length to compensate for this. The bass however often runs out of tuning slide. Since its length is so great, it requires more than the usual allotted slide length and it plays nice and steady in E or Eb. The bores of these bass drones are often too big and/or too short to play in pitch and dead steady with any reed, period. There are also many Tenor drones and some Baritone drones that have bores that are too big to accommodate steadiness at any pitch. It is more common than you'd think.

Unfortunately there are precious few makers in a position to discern some of these issues, which is obviously why the issues exist. And certainly most of the "problems" that a piper runs into can easily be cured with expert reed adjustments. A good and innocuous example of this is the fact that many of the chanters I run across have a lot of tape on the holes. With the exception of tape on the back D hole, most of this taping is misguided can be removed without any adjustment to the reed. Sometimes the tape is indicative of improper bag pressure. Of course, tape is of no permanent consequence.

[mirabai]

Basically what happened to a lot, if not most of us. My first set was by Wilkinson-McCarthy. Dan O Dowd told me he didn't foresee it was ever going to work properly so he told me to take it to a pipemaker to get it 're-worked'. The maker didn't like the idea of doing that and told me to sell the lot. I was, and with hindsight am even more so, glad he did (and didn't attempt to work on it).

I'm a bit confused with your last sentence. So you are saying you are glad you are rid of them without further investment? Understandable, but what of the person who bought them from you? DId you inform them at the time of sale that they were unable "to work properly"?

[Mr.Gumby]

The maker who advised me to sell replied to my misgivings 'they sold it to you didn't they?' The first prospective buyers were a couple who were looking for a set for their twelve year old daughter, I told them what was what. The eventual buyer was a self professed bagpipe connoisseur. I gave him ample time to examine and try the set. He thought they were beautiful. I didn't feel so bad then, he made his choice.


I ordered a new half set and it arrived in six weeks. Those were the days. The chanter that came with that had it's problems and eventually, instead of selling, I traded it in with the maker for a keyed one. Didn't feel bad about that either, he sold it to me in the first place after all.

That all took place in 1982-83, FWIW.

[TheSilverSpear]

I agree with you, Bill, but I read Brazenkane's original post as asking what you should do in those cases where the instrument itself needs work -- those cases where the reed isn't the problem.

I sold my dodgy drones with the caveat, "Well, I never had any luck getting them to work, but you might." But I guess therein lies the trouble -- because these things are not likely to ever be fixed, they stay out there in circulation.