used bagpipes Ebay

[OC Richard]

On another thread a potential new piper was concerned about bagpipe prices.

One resource often overlooked is picking up a fine used instrument on Ebay for well under what a new bagpipe would cost.

Right now, doing the following search

-bagpipe
-all listings (Buy It Now and Auction)
-all categories (because many sellers post things in odd categories)
-worldwide
-sorted by Highest + Shipping First
-used

I came up with the following instruments in the under $1,500 range (what you would pay for a decent student/stepup flute, sax, or horn).

All are fine handcrafted Scottish-made African Blackwood instruments. Any would do you for many years if not your lifetime of playing.

Grainger & Campbell $1,450 BIN

Robertson $1,000 17 hours

McCallum $900 10 hours

Pettigrew $600 4 days/ $860 BIN

Grainger & Campbell $410 1 day

Hardie $500 1 day

Hardie $300 5 days

Kintail $213 5 days

I myself would be most interested in the Grainger & Campbell pipes, a fine maker in the 2nd half of the 20th century. The prices reflect the current fairly low esteem that Hardie and Kintail pipes are held in, yet I've heard great-sounding Kintails. If that Kintail goes for around $500 it's a steal.

The curious one here is the Robertson set, an extremely highly-regarded mid-20th century maker. This set is mounted in real ivory which makes it illegal to transport across international borders, and illegal to possess in the USA. These legal issues might be the cause of its ridiculously low price.

I perhaps should point out that the McCallums are made in a modern factory-like shop using sophisticated CNC machines. Some look down on McCallum pipes for that reason, but you'll see plenty of McCallums being played in Grade One circles which speaks for itself.

A couple notes for non-Ebayers

-when you sort by Highest Price + Shipping First, any item listed with Shipping Not Specified drops to the bottom of the last page

-searching Used will mean that you miss seeing used instruments which the seller hasn't listed as Used for no apparent reason. It happens all the time.

[tundramanq]

OC, did you see any copycats? At the upper prices its quite profitable to make these pieces of junk, lookalikes. New to the pipes people really don't know what to look for to separate genuine from fake.

Really, I would want a veteran piper watching over my shoulder on this one.
Lots of interchangeable parts.?!?
Were they stored well or "a horror story" and prettied up?

[OC Richard]

OC, did you see any copycats?

If you mean like the thing where somebody in China makes a knockoff of a specific Gucci purse, AFAIK that sort of thing doesn't exist in the bagpipe world.

Yes a large number of makers in Sialkot Pakistani churn out horrid pipes, but experienced pipers can spot these fairly easily. The Pakistani pipes look like Pakistani pipes. They're not exact copies of any specific Scottish makers. At least I don't recall that happening.

There was a thread here a while back where I show two Ebay listings, one a horrible cheap Pakistani pipe, the other a fabulous old Robertson set. The former is practically worthless, the latter worth thousands of dollars, and would make its owner very proud.

Even experts are occasionally fooled. Nearly always this is because the photos on the Ebay listing are blurry, or too far away, or don't show the diagnostic things pipe experts need to see. The expert knows he's taking a chance when he buys a set with marginal photos.

It's very common for a cheap Pakistani set to be misidentified by the Ebay seller as being from some particular Scottish maker. This isn't dishonesty but ignorance. Usually it's because the set of pipes happens to have a chanter with it by a legitimate maker, which is stamped with the maker's name, whereas Pakistani pipes are nearly always un-stamped.

Your point is completely true: Ebay is full of dangers for the non-expert, and such people really need to have an experienced pipe-spotter point out which pipes are a value.

[Willie T]

Thank you! This thread is very timely! In the next few months I'm hoping to buy a set and Ebay hadn't even crossed my mind. I took lessons many years ago and hadn't played in a long time but I recently started up again and I have been practicing on some borrowed poly pipes. I'd definitely prefer some blackwood pipes. Thanks again for the information!

[MacGumerait]

Richard , I have a set of Grainger and Campbell pipes that I purchased new in 1970 . They are quality and a bit heavy on weight . Although , they do have deep drone tone that I admire .

[416 Rigby]

I've heard snippets of McCallum bashing before. McCallums are CNC'd for all the roughing out and contouring, which saves a huge amount of labor time on steps of the manufacturing that don't require an extremely skilled woodturner. All the combing, beading, and polishing is done by hand. Anyone who looks down on them for that is pretty narrow minded. It doesn't take a huge amount of skill to rough turn the blanks, anyone with even a little bit of lathe experience is capable of that.

They're passing on the savings to the customer, and I suppose that rubs some elitists the wrong way. I have an extremely picky eye for detail from a career in aviation, and I'd be hard pressed to find anything amiss with my set of McCallums, or any of the other sets I've looked at. Fit and finish is excellent, and they have a 5 year warranty, another sign that a manufacturer believes in their product. Works for me.

[jumary]

OC, I know you are aware of this, but some the other members here ought to check out the Trading Post on the Bob Dunsire Bagpipe Forums.
http://forums.bobdunsire.com/forums/index.php

I just did a quick check and saw several sets of pipes for sale. Plus, it's no guarantee, but the pipers on that site are generally good folks and will likely provide fair descriptions of the instruments they are selling.

[OC Richard]

At least with Ebay you have buyer protection and some recourse if something goes wrong. Buying from a private party outside of Ebay entails a bit more risk, though I will say that on this site and a few other sites I'm a member of I've never had a problem with buying or selling things.

A cautionary tale about Ebay though: if you buy something, be sure to thoroughly examine it right away. I bought a jacket once and just threw it in the closet when it arrived. A couple months later I went to wear it and I discovered that its condition was not as advertised. Ebay told me that too much time had passed and there was nothing I could do. I don't know what the time limit is, but I passed it.

About McCallum pipes yes there are people who make a big deal about pipes made by a lone craftsman working in a quaint little shop v "factory made" pipes. I visited a couple one-man operations in Scotland, a guy with one old lathe and everything covered in wood dust. One guy's pipes were horrible, one guy's were mediocre. On the other hand, three makers using modern workshops with multiple craftsmen, Naill, (neo) Henderson, and McCallum, make fine pipes which are being played in Grade One circles.

Then there are one-man operations which make excellent pipes such as MacLellan, Dunbar, Atherton, Kron, and so forth.

The thing about McCallum is that they've never been complacent with their product, but rather are always evolving it, finding ways to make it better.

Many people complained about their mounts falling off, saying that "real pipes" have threaded mounts. McCallum fixed that, and now thread their mounts. People complained about the plating on their nickel mounts eventually wearing off, so they changed to solid alloy. People complained about the brittle imitation ivory that McCallum (and most other makers) use, so McCallum switched to the tough stuff that Dunbar has long used.

McCallum drones, though rich in tone, had some stability issues, so in 2011 McCallum made changes in all of the drones "to be more like Willie McCallum's 1890 Hendersons" with bolder tenors, a more stable bass, and all drones easier to tune. (Information from Kenny McLeod.) That's their claim, I've not played a post-2011 McCallum.

[Blupiper]

At least with Ebay you have buyer protection and some recourse if something goes wrong. Buying from a private party outside of Ebay entails a bit more risk, though I will say that on this site and a few other sites I'm a member of I've never had a problem with buying or selling things.

A cautionary tale about Ebay though: if you buy something, be sure to thoroughly examine it right away. I bought a jacket once and just threw it in the closet when it arrived. A couple months later I went to wear it and I discovered that its condition was not as advertised. Ebay told me that too much time had passed and there was nothing I could do. I don't know what the time limit is, but I passed it.

About McCallum pipes yes there are people who make a big deal about pipes made by a lone craftsman working in a quaint little shop v "factory made" pipes. I visited a couple one-man operations in Scotland, a guy with one old lathe and everything covered in wood dust. One guy's pipes were horrible, one guy's were mediocre. On the other hand, three makers using modern workshops with multiple craftsmen, Naill, (neo) Henderson, and McCallum, make fine pipes which are being played in Grade One circles.

Then there are one-man operations which make excellent pipes such as MacLellan, Dunbar, Atherton, Kron, and so forth.

The thing about McCallum is that they've never been complacent with their product, but rather are always evolving it, finding ways to make it better.

Many people complained about their mounts falling off, saying that "real pipes" have threaded mounts. McCallum fixed that, and now thread their mounts. People complained about the plating on their nickel mounts eventually wearing off, so they changed to solid alloy. People complained about the brittle imitation ivory that McCallum (and most other makers) use, so McCallum switched to the tough stuff that Dunbar has long used.

McCallum drones, though rich in tone, had some stability issues, so in 2011 McCallum made changes in all of the drones "to be more like Willie McCallum's 1890 Hendersons" with bolder tenors, a more stable bass, and all drones easier to tune. (Information from Kenny McLeod.) That's their claim, I've not played a post-2011 McCallum.

Well said, Richard. The romantic notion of the single man shop with a lathe and a pile of sawdust can cover (no pun intended) a raft of shortcomings. A decade ago when I started on pipes, the best stand I could get were a student set made by McCallum. They were just fine: plain turned but possessing a nice sound and none of the problems you cited above. When I moved up to a "lifetime" set, I did a bunch of research and, ironically, went with a set from a one-man shop (Atherton.) Use of CNC allows an excellent reproducibility, which will allow the manufacturer to fine-tune the sound and pass savings in production on to the customer. Much of what is out there can be reduced to taste (what kink of drone sound one prefers), bling and cost. One can go buck wild if the budget allows, but a good instrument can be had for reasonable money. Like you said, Richard, McCallums can be hear in the Grade 1 circles--that's pretty select company. Good advice, as always.

JMB

[OC Richard]

You can't do better than Atherton! Congrats!

There's a solo competitor here who competes on Athertons and their tone is special.

Actually what I noticed at our Queen Mary Games, which holds the solo piping competition indoors where you can really hear the resonance of each set of pipes individually, is that anything non-Henderson stands out from the crowd.

Seems that competitor after competitor plays either vintage Hendersons or vintage or new pipes from other makers that have that Henderson tone.

Somebody steps up with an Atherton, Gibson, or McCallum and you sit up and take note; the tone is quite different (not in a bad way).