These sound files come courtesy of John Follin!
There are 6 sound files here. There are 3 different bagpipes, Naill (~1980’s), Robertson (~1920), and Sinclair (~1950-60’s). All are with a Crozier Cane bass. They are then split into 2 sets of 3. 1 set being with Canning tenors, the other set being with regular cane tenors.
John says he retunes at times and shuts off a tenor or two and then restarts them so you can hear the harmonic effects from the blending of the drones.
Here I have spliced together each set of files that use the same drone reeds with snippets of about 5 seconds each for direct comparison.
Naill, Robertson, then Sinclair with Cane tenors
Naill, Robertson, then Sinclair with Canning tenors
As a personal comment from the 2 sound files above.
1. The Naill’s are evenly balanced, being hard to distinguish tenor and bass sounds.
2. The Robertson’s have a dominant tenor sound, giving them a very noticeable ring. Though this ring is present for all the recordings as long as your speakers are good enough to reproduce the sound.
3. The Sinclair’s have a very bass dominant sound, with subdued tenors.
I prefer the Robertson sound the most. To me, it resembles my 1950’s Hendersons. The ring is very prominent and they have a very bold tone. To each his own, however.