I Just Stumbled Across This Rather Interesting 'New' Instrument

[OC Richard]

Back to the "Highland hornpipe", it's just a sax mouthpiece on a piece of PVC pipe with holes drilled in it. I think the new ones are alloy.

I did the same sort of thing, I took a clarinet mouthpiece and stuck it on top of the body of an Irish Low F whistle, which has the same ID/bore as a clarinet. I had to drill a thumbhole to give me one full octave.

Mine uses Irish whistle fingering and sounds like a clarinet. Sort of cool.

[Tim Little]

Back to the "Highland hornpipe", it's just a sax mouthpiece on a piece of PVC pipe with holes drilled in it. I think the new ones are alloy.

I did the same sort of thing, I took a clarinet mouthpiece and stuck it on top of the body of an Irish Low F whistle, which has the same ID/bore as a clarinet. I had to drill a thumbhole to give me one full octave.

Mine uses Irish whistle fingering and sounds like a clarinet. Sort of cool.

Any audio or video clips you'd care to share, Richard?

[imrichmond]

Back to the "Highland hornpipe", it's just a sax mouthpiece on a piece of PVC pipe with holes drilled in it. I think the new ones are alloy.

A former piper in our band is also a semi-professional saxophonist of long standing who came to the pipes late in life. Anyhow, he was afraid that spending too much time on the practice chanter would damage his saxophonist's embouchure. To prevent this, he fastened a saxophone mouthpiece, mostly with tape, as I recall, to his practice chanter in place of the regular PC mouthpiece. Since he still used a practice chanter reed, there was no difference in the sound. It sure looked funny, though. I don't know if it helped his embouchure, but he pretty much gave up piping after another year or so to concentrate on the saxophone.