My second and third sets of pipes were a 18" (Bb) set and a concert set by Ginsberg. His bores profiles were gotten from Matt Kiernan. His flat sets usually work quite well. The concert sets were more hit and miss. Once I figured out the staple for the concert chanter, it played very well. I used a 2 1/8" long cylindrical staple rolled from a 0.540" wide blank. The bore of the staple is under 5/32" diameter. The drones for all his sets reed easily and usually sound great. The flat chanters are usually very good to excellent. He made a couple of styles of regulators for concert pipes. His wide bore regulators were hard to reed and had C#s, rather than C nat. His narrower bore regs. were OK. Some of the turnings looked rather odd on some sets.
I am restoring a Bb set made by him for a guy who has stored them for years. It is in tulip-wood, with brass and ivory mounts. It has nice looking turnings and lots of tusk and is very well made. The chanter reeds with a 2 1/4" long tubing staple in the reed and is well in tune. The owner wants to sell it as he does not play, and only wants $5,000 for the set, including case. PM me, if interested. It will only sell in the US, because of the ivory.
When it arrived here (Melbourne, Australia) it sounded pretty sweet if a little quiet (I am currently playing a McDeeg C# prototype in holly & enjoying it). As the weather warmed up the chanter got quieter, lost tone and the back d.
When I opened the reed using the bridle the upper octave went sharp and bottom D started gurgling with not much improvement in back d.
So I am looking to make another reed as there are no reputable reedmakers locally and (in my experience) reeds made in other parts of Oz (except Tasmania) don’t work the same after they get here.
If anone can post reed dimensions to suit a similar chanter, they would be much appeciated.
