Question for Pipers

[OC Richard]

I'm a new piper... when I go to Piping competitions I like to ask pipers what brand of pipes they play and half the time the answer is "I don't know they're the ones the band gave me".

I don't think I've ever heard that, in 40 years of piping and going to Highland Games. Thing is, there aren't any bands that I know of around here that supply the pipes, the sole exception being a High School that used to have several old beat-up 1960s Lawries they would loan to students who didn't have their own pipes. Few kids used the school sets. The kids I talked to knew that they were old Lawries.

I did see back at the West Virginia Highland Games in Bridgeport a school band fully outfitted with polypenco Dunbars. Very smart! They're practically kidproof.

No, usually it's the other way around: pipers know all about their pipes and are eager to brag about them if you give them the chance. Even pipers with dodgy old orange catalin mounted pipes will tell you how great their pipes are.

Two things to be aware of:

1) In the "classic" period of pipemaking (say, 1880 to 1940) there were loads of makers, but 99% of the modern pipers who play old sets will tell you that their pipes are Hendersons. Kinda like the deal where if Washington slept in all the places that claim such he would have to have slept in several different places every day of his life, and if all the pieces of The True Cross were gathered in one spot you'd have enough wood to built the Ark, if all the old pipes claimed to be Hendersons were such, Peter Henderson would have had to pumped out dozens of sets a week and all the other makers would have made one set a year, combined.

Obviously Henderson was making pipes at about the same rate as many other makers and the pipes of all the various 'classic' period survived in more or less equal proportion; so that of the present pipes claimed to be Henderson many (or most) are not. Once I ran into a piper playing a very old (early 19th century) set and when I asked him who the maker was he told me "Henderson". I nearly spit out my beer! Henderson hadn't been born when that set was made and it looked absolutely nothing like Henderson pipes. "Henderson" has become like people calling all vacuum cleaners "Hoovers" and calling all adhesive bandages "Bandaids".

2) 99% of pipers will tell you that their 'classic' set is made from African Blackwood, probably because that that wood has been the standard wood since around 1940 and many pipers don't know that any other wood was ever used. Most 'classic' sets are not, in fact, ABW, but are Cocus or Ebony. The 'classic' 19th makers used the latter two woods nearly exclusively and African Blackwood wasn't mentioned or offered on their price lists. When ABW does begin to show up on makers' price lists, around 1900, it appears as a third choice, often at the bottom of the page in a footnote.

Ask me about my pipes. I'll tell you more than you want to know!