Difference Between Different Chanter Reeds

[Blupiper]

Pipers, chanters and reeds. Beware, there be dragons here! I will second OC Richard on this; there are so many options (choices) here. Pipers will be like economists--you ask five for their opinions and you will receive eight answers. If you have an instructor, ask for that person's thoughts and experience on the matter. When you are ready to purchase a set of pipes, you can find good buys on used sets over at the Bob Dunsire Forums (a valuable resource and good place to spend time.) My opinion: gather other's thoughts, buy as good as you can afford (nothing wrong with used), find an opinion you trust and attend a few piping competitions to hear different pipes and piper and chat them up. Often, you may find the sound you like will steer you to a certain part of the piping world. I began with a 'student model' set of pipes from McCallum with a McCallum poly chanter and now have a set of 2010 Atherton MacDougall bores with a McC2 chanter in blackwood. Like OC Richard suggests, Dunbar is a fine maker of pipes, as is McCallum. If you buy from a retailer, stick with one who primarily deals in pipes--a kilt selling retailer with pipes on the side might not be able to help with all your questions. See? It's all clear as mud.

JMB

[OC Richard]

Dunbar has also been making MacDougall reproductions. I haven't played one or heard one, but Jim MacGillivray really likes them

http://piping.on.ca/browseproducts.asp?catID=159

Yes you can get fine pipes from American makers or UK makers, but it's hard to pass up the current 30% discount on Canadian-made pipes.

There are a number of fine pipers here who have switched from their wonderful 100-year old Hendersons to new pipes by Atherton and MacLellan. These American makers are, perhaps, making the best pipes on the planet right now.

You bring up something that comes up on BobDunsire fairly regularly, and that's a newbie going to some piping contest and hearing so-and-so's pipes and having a premature epiphany, putting up that particular set of pipes/setup as a sort of Holy Grail, which the newbie then begins questing after.

Thing is, that particular piper, if given some time to set up ANY of the pipes used at that particular contest that day, would produce HIS tone. You can buy a Naill set and use the same reeds Gordon Walker is using but you're not going to get Gordon Walker's tone. Hand Gordon Walker any other good set, a set of McCallums or Athertons or Dunbars, and in short order he'll be getting HIS tone out of them.

I've seen newbies get set after set, go through dozens of different makes of drone reeds, and so on. They might have been better off in the long run getting a good pipe and spending the time learning how to play it. (However they will get some insights about pipe design and reed design by fiddling around with a large number of pipes and reeds.)

[Kamilavalamp]

Dunbar has also been making MacDougall reproductions. I haven't played one or heard one, but Jim MacGillivray really likes them

http://piping.on.ca/browseproducts.asp?catID=159

Yes you can get fine pipes from American makers or UK makers, but it's hard to pass up the current 30% discount on Canadian-made pipes.

There are a number of fine pipers here who have switched from their wonderful 100-year old Hendersons to new pipes by Atherton and MacLellan. These American makers are, perhaps, making the best pipes on the planet right now.

You bring up something that comes up on BobDunsire fairly regularly, and that's a newbie going to some piping contest and hearing so-and-so's pipes and having a premature epiphany, putting up that particular set of pipes/setup as a sort of Holy Grail, which the newbie then begins questing after.

Thing is, that particular piper, if given some time to set up ANY of the pipes used at that particular contest that day, would produce HIS tone. You can buy a Naill set and use the same reeds Gordon Walker is using but you're not going to get Gordon Walker's tone. Hand Gordon Walker any other good set, a set of McCallums or Athertons or Dunbars, and in short order he'll be getting HIS tone out of them.

I've seen newbies get set after set, go through dozens of different makes of drone reeds, and so on. They might have been better off in the long run getting a good pipe and spending the time learning how to play it. (However they will get some insights about pipe design and reed design by fiddling around with a large number of pipes and reeds.)

I really just wanted to know what makes some of these reeds cost 50 bucks more than the rest. lol
I figure there must be something special about their design that separates the expensive reeds from the rest.
I was planning on getting delrin pipes because I'm afraid of how the extreme temperature and humidity changes in my area would affect blackwood, What would your suggestion be about from who to get those? I hear Dunbar makes really good delrin sets.

[OC Richard]

There's a spectacular set of delrin Dunbars on Ebay right now:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bagpipes-201...kAAOSwhkRWcW56

Personally, I would recommend anyone get wood pipes rather than plastic. I owned, at the same time, two sets of ABW Dunbars and one set of plastic Dunbars. As far as tone goes, there's virtually no difference. I doubt if anyone could tell a wood set from a plastic set by listening, as long as the specs were the same.

What I don't like about plastic pipes is

1) the appearance. Let's face it, plastic doesn't look as good as fine wood.

2) condensation. A large amount of moisture would collect in the drones when played, making the drone reeds misbehave.

3) weight. On the shoulder, the plastic pipes were far heavier. I love the comfort of a light set on the shoulder.

A word about nomenclature: the American term "delrin" refers to the same stuff that is called "polypenco" in the UK.

Here's that Ebay Dunbar poly/delrin set. It's a reproduction of a MacDougall set, and has a very high-quality refined tone. It's mounted in imitation ivory and hand-engraved aluminum



More nomenclature stuff: the material that Americans call "aluminum" is called "alloy" in the UK.