so the baritone drone reed in my B set is giving me some grief. It raises in pitch when I’m leaning into the bag for second octave or whatever. It’s enough that I can’t really tune flat and squeeze into tune. Iffa she play at 123Hz when I squeeze ze goat, she make a 126Hz, you know?
I don’t why I affected a fake Italian accent there.
In any case, it’s a composite reed with brass body and styrene tongue. I have two blobs, one on the tip and one midway between tip and o-ring. I’ve messed around with adding/subtracting blob mass, moving o-ring up, etc but usually it either doesn’t eliminate the warble or gets the balance off so it doesn’t sound with the bass and tenor.
And as a brief postscript, my wife is an absolute saint. She lets me practice three feet away from her while she’s working at her drafting table. Of course, it is a B set, but still.. round of applause for Janet!
Are the tenor + bass composite also? 'cos if dey’s cane youse could sticka cane bari in dere, too, yaknowwhaddimean?
'n if dey aint,
vell, den…
Wot’s holdin the tounge onto the body? shrink wrap? is the tounge seated good 'n tight in there? Is the tounge sealin onto the body when ya suck in? oy, vey.
is the o-ring centered straight up-n-down when ya look at said reed in profile, not up further on top, all cockeyed at an angle?
ah, ya probably did all this already anyway…
I got these type o reed too…altho its concert-size ,& I use em in French pipes.
Ah yes, Adele and Janet can share duties. Of course Adele has allowed veritable hordes of pipers to descend on your house. I think Janet draws the line at one.
Back to the reed. I have tried to various gravity tricks. I just took a look at the reed and it’s airtight, the o-ring is straight and it’s seated tightly.
What causes the warble? I know some reeds drop and some raise in tone when overblown. I might throw a cane reed in there just to see what happens.
If the primary problem is that the baritone is rising under pressure, probably the tongue’s preferred vibrational speed is too low. In other words, the pitch will tend to “seek” the correct pitch of the air column, as pressure builds. Is the slide pushed in rather more than usual? (I am guessing it might be)
Try doing one or more of the following:
remove wax
move wax towards the base of the tongue, away from the tip
raise and/or tighten bridle
(You may need to experiment with more than one of the above fixes if the reed begins to shut under pressure as a result). All of the above changes will require you to pull the slide out further in order to tune, but you may achieve the goal of a more stable pitch.
I have the opposite problem with my D set with the tenor drone if my pressure is to low it will jump up in pitch. If I lean on the bag it will return to desired pitch. I have a gob of wax on the tip of the brass bladed reed. is the logical remedy the opposite of Patrick’s
I found solution. I stuck a cane reed in there. No more warble. Of course the cane is a lot weaker than the composites but I kind of like the sound of bass and tenor giving it the omph. The bari never sounded great as it always seemed somewhat out of tune.
I’ll try and get around to making a recording of the drones and get some opinionated feedback. I live in a huge warehouse loft so I need to record in the bathroom or something as everything soundwise gets lost in here.
A rule of thumb: if the drone raises in pitch, when pressure is applied, then the REED needs to be SHARPENED, if it goes flat the reed needs to be flattened.
Go slow and adjust in small increments.
If your drone is going sharp and you put weight on the tip of the tongue it will flatten the reed which is the opposite of what you need to do and will make the problem worse.
more blobs (on cane) usually means more instability. to paraphrase tim britton & peter hunter; provding the drone is correctly made- there’s no reason why a drone reed should be able to be rock steady. that means not budging an iota under pressure.
…it takes work and a thorough understanding of what affects what…which can only be gained from near mind numbing hours of dicking around with adjustments, but it is absolutely possible and well worth the effort.
Really, more blob means less stability? Good to know, I thought that with the tongue being heavier it would be more stable. Shows what I know. I’ll keep the mind numbing messing around up and go back to a blank slate of a reed and go from there. In a way, I prefer messing around with the drone reeds as there is a bit less frustration that with chanter reeds.There’s only so much a drone reed can do and only so much that can be done to it.
Note that K. said “usually”. Sometimes the right amount of wax can increase stability.
Pat’s principles are right; if you read his post and mine together perhaps it’ll be clearer. The goal is raising or lowering the frequency of the reed to cooperate with the frequency of the air column.
I don’t think there’s any real difference, stability-wise, between a reed with a naturally heavy tongue and a reed with a light tongue which has a bit of wax added. An alternative to wax is scraping the base of the scrape of the tongue, which reduces stiffness and thus lowers the frequency without adding weight. If your reed is already tending to shut off, however, this may make the shutting-off problem worse, whereas wax may not.
ahhh, you said it there! Applies to ANY reed..ANY material…
Reed, string, wax, bluetack…$20-40.00
Books + pictures of same…$50-75.00
CD’s, Tionol &workshop tix, ear-training classes…$50+
Knowing when the ‘point of no return’ is approaching..priceless
