My buddy has too many bagpipes. Which is great for me, as I get to muck about with the ones he’s not playing now and again. But, today was a special occassion, he lent me his babies. A set of 1920ish ebony Robertson’s that have had the casein ringcaps and bushes replaced with moose antler by Michael MacHarg. They are otherwise flat combed with nickel ferrules. Droooool…….

The other pipe is a set of 1950ish Robertson’s, fully mounted, with a replacement blowstick (original mount and brass lined) by Murray Huggins over at Colin Kyo bagpipes. Drooooooooool some more……

Kron poly chanter with Gilmour reed, I think. Enjoy!

1920ish Robertson’s – Ezeedrone reeds – Hector the Hero and the Iron Man (two wonderful tunes that I didn’t royally screw up by the famous James Scott Skinner) – Hector the Hero and the Iron Man (the 2nd is the original audio file that appeared on the blog, but it was the ‘wrong’ one as I normally normalize the recording to make it louder, so it’s preserved here so you can tell the difference between a normalized and non-normalized recording)

1950ish Robertson’s – Canning tenor and Wygent bass reeds – Loch Tay Boat Song, March of the King of Laois, and Bessie McIntyre

Edit: I wasn’t too happy with the above recording, but I’m not too happy with this one either. The reed was sharp on the top hand in the Colin Kyo chanter, especially high G, which gave rise to a few odd sounding grace notes due to the heavy taping required. While dunking a reed in water for a little bit will certainly make it easier, it seems to compromise the reed as well. Oh well. I’ll have to think on this practice some more as a viable way to ease up reeds that arrive in the mail that require 50+ inches of water to make a sound. Anyways, here’s the MSR where I apparently forgot what part I was playing in the strathspey.

Major Manson’s Farewell to Clachantrushal, Inverary Castle, and Rejected Suitor

This post addresses several things: 1. Inveran chanter 2. Drone reeds in my 1950ish Henderson’s 3. Effect of easy chanter reed on my left ring/pinkie fingers and that mess.

1. I’ve got an easy reed in this Inveran chanter, very easy. My non-piping wife got a few seconds out of it with all drones going. The whole top hand is sharp relative to high A. I thought, dang. So, I tried a bunch of reeds; straight cut, ridge cut; dry, soaked in water: no change. The high G is half covered with tape. So, I don’t know. It’s a great sounding chanter despite all the tape, as it suffers no ill effect as far as I can tell, except that for some reeds, the amount of tape on high G can make finding the sweet spot difficult. Not so with this reed though. Note that the little chirps that occur on high G grace notes to/on low G are a result of the easy strength of the reed.

2. Redwood tenor and Colin Kyo bass drone reeds in my 1950ish Hendersons. I like! More stable than my previous setup.

3. Because this reed is so easy, I found I could relax more which helped with my E grace note problem, but as the set progresses the problem rears its little ugly head more and more. Bleh…

David Crosbie Miller, Battle of Waterloo, and 51st Highland Division

The kids were asleep so this was recorded not in the bedroom, as usual, but in our walk-in closet, hence the bigger chanter sound relative to the drones compared to the recordings directly below.