Aberdeen District - Pleasure or nightmare to pleat?

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I just don't understand why a tartan would be designed with the sett so long and I wouldn't buy a tartan that long(personal preferance) knowing that a kilt made of this is likely to have very few pleats.

Why would you think there would be very few pleats? I suspect such a kilt will have a fairly typical number of pleats. As has been pointed out, there are LOTS of red stripes in the Aberdeen tartan, if that's where the kilt-maker chose to stripe it. If anything, pleating to the stripe may result in a higher than normal number of pleats specifically because there are so many red stripes to work with. What's important to note is that the red stripes vary in width. So fold the wide stripes down to the width of the narrow stripes, and you have the potential for lots of pleats. Either way, I suspect that each pleat may vary some in depth (as Tess pointed out.) The trick is to do a few test pinnings, to see what works and what doesn't.