
Originally Posted by
jsrnephdoc
I've been watching LOTS of Pipe bands while exercising on an indoors stationary bike (hard to do much else when outdoors it's ≥ 105°F in Las Vegas).
About civilian pipe bands, kilt pins aren't all that popular.
To put numbers on it, in Grade One (the bands with the best musicianship, and generally the best-dressed, who are "influencers" amongst lower-level pipe bands the world over) only four of the 14 bands were wearing kilt pins at this year's World Pipe Band Championships last Saturday.
I've played in pipe bands for nearly 50 years now. I've played in a few bands that wore kilt pins and in a few that didn't. From experience I can tell you that there's no "upside" to wearing them, and plenty of "downside".
Bands can wear the same set of kilts for a half-century or more. (One of the Grade One bands, Shotts, got new kilts...in 1983.) The kilts of all the bands who wear kilt pins show damages and stains.
A thing about uniforms is that the more items you add the more things there are to go missing or be worn wrongly. And so it is with kilt pins, it's extremely difficult to get everybody in the band to wear them the same way, and inevitably somebody will lose theirs. So the kilt pins, rather than making the band look more smart, make them look higgledy piggledy.
It's why the preponderance of bands don't bother.

Originally Posted by
jsrnephdoc
When I look at military pipe bands in Scotland, they're centered mid-way up the front apron.
Is there some significance to that?
Sadly because of budget cuts and other causes there are very few military pipe bands in Scotland now.
In 2006 all of Scotland's infantry regiments were coalesced into a single uber-regiment The Royal Regiment Of Scotland.
Every time I look, another one of the battalions' pipe bands has been abolished. As far as I know there's only four left:
2SCOTS
3SCOTS
4SCOTS
7SCOTS
The only battalion whose pipers wear kilt pins is 2SCOTS, here
Last edited by OC Richard; 20th August 25 at 07:56 AM.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
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