I’m breaking in a new chanter reed at present and I’m having trouble holding at B’. I can hit the note and keep it for about a second. Then I keep falling back to the lower octave. I’ve tried all my usual tricks - (1) opening the G and (2) lifting the chanter off my knee, but neither trick works for long. With my old reed, I rarely had a problem holding at B’, and whenever I had a problem, (1) or (2) would always work.
Any suggestions?
If its a new reed, it may take a while for it to loosen up enough to hold the high B for longer. Maybe just keep working on it. give it a week or two.
djm
PJ,
Did you ever try any of those two reeds I gave you to try the chanter, you could bring them tommorow and I could bring my “stuff” 
to arrange it so that the ‘B’ is accessible. 
upiper71
Exactly the problem I’m having at the moment. Everything is in tune with itself. But the B can only reached with an unusually high ammount pressure. It’s certainly not the chanter. As its recent.
Cheers L42B 
upiper1971 - Will do. See you at around midday.
L42B - The problem isn’t pressure. I hit the A’ with the regular amount of pressure I need to hit A’. Using the same pressure usually gets me to B’, but currently I fall back to B (first octave). I can increase the pressure until the reed closes and it still won’t stay longer than a second or two on B’. I think djm might be right - I just need to break in the reed properly.