Small Pipes

[OC Richard]

That touches upon yet another can of worms! And that's the differences in chanter designs and especially reed designs.

Highland practice chanters, and the "miniature Highland bagpipes, or chamber pipes" long made by Highland pipe makers, have a narrow cylindrical bore and a long narrow reed.

Northumbrian smallpipe chanters, long made by NSP makers, have a similar narrow cylindrical bore but a quite different style of reed, shorter and wider.

I don't know to what extent the chanter bores varied, so I tend to ascribe the differences to the reed design. The NSP chanter with its short fat reed gives more volume and a darker, richer tone as compared to Highland practice chanters and miniature pipes, which tend to sound thin and nasal.

In the 1970s the great Northumbrian smallpipe maker Colin Ross decided to create a Highland piper-friendly version of the NSP. He did this by removing all the chanter keys, opening up the chanter bottom, and reconfiguring the finger-holes so that Highland pipers, using their normal Highland pipe fingering, could produce the normal Highland pipe scale.

The bore and reed design of the NSP was retained, giving the dark rich tone of the NSP.

He also simplified the drone configuration, going from the usual NSP setup of four complex drones to a more Scottish setup of three simple drones.

Thus the "Scottish Smallpipe" was born.

NSPs were commonly made in G, F, and D. The new Scottish Smallpipe was offered in a number of keys including D, C, Bb, and A. The 'A' Scottish Smallpipe chanter was nearly an octave lower than the 'G' Northumbrian Smallpipe chanter.

So, the situation was that more-or-less similar instruments were being made by the Highland pipe makers and the Northumbrian pipe makers, though with different chanter reed designs giving different-sounding chanters.

Seems that one by one the Scottish pipe makers abandoned the traditional practice-chanter style chanter and switched to the Northumbrian-style chanter for their Scottish Smallpipes.

Jerry Gibson, the American Highland pipe maker, began using the Northumbrian-style chanter and reed design for his practice chanters. Thus a Gibson practice chanter is actually a mouth-blown smallpipe chanter, rather than a traditional Highland practice chanter. They're more freeblowing and don't have the kazoo-like sound associated with Highland practice chanters.

Here are traditional cane Highland practice chanter reeds (top) and a cane Northumbrian Smallpipe chanter reed (bottom)