I have a Froment B chanter. Both octaves of F# are very sharp. I realize that the solution may be a new reed, but not being a reed maker (yet), I have been seeing what I can do with rushing. The maker supplied the chanter with a rush from the bell up to G to lower the whole right hand. I have taped the top of the tonehole as much as I can, and added blue-tac to the rush at that tonehole. The closer I get to in-tune, the greater the tendency to auto-cran on the low D. It is possible to get both F#'s close to in-tune, but then low D is a total loss. The rush is sort of shepherd’s crook shaped. I’ve tried a straight rod with all sorts of ring and U shaped objects in the bell.
I’m wondering if there are any variations on rushing the bore that might be effective, something like a sleeve?
Thanks all, Dave.
If it is only the F# that is misbehaving then you could cut a crescent shaped sliver of cork and glue this into the top of the F# hole instead of the tape/rush alterations.
I have tried filling the top part of the hole to the point of choking off the note, and it was still way too sharp.
Who made the reed? Can you post a photo of it?
Does the F improve when you increase bag pressure?
I have several reeds, some made by Froment, and some made by a piper friend who is a very good, very experienced reedmaker. They all respond about the same way, generally sharp in the right hand and very sharp on F#. A couple of them are very good reeds except for this F# vs. low D issue. Bag pressure doesn’t affect the F# pitch, it only makes the auto cranning worse.
Dear illwinds,
my expierence about this is: As long as a rush is necessary something in the chanter or rather the reed cone is not right. In an ideal world the cone - beginning in the staple/reed | ending at the bell - should be perfect regarding the proportion of diameters at every single millimeter of the staple’s and chanter’s lenght which then results a perfect scale and perfect octaves for every single note in both octaves*.
If the (lower) right hand is too high to be lowered by a rush - intervalls within one octave too narrow - you should try to widen the staple pipe: A sharp right hand means a too low left hand comparing with an ideal scale. Or other way round what you have: A too narrow scale results too low high notes while the lower notes are right.
This can easily be solved by a bigger diameter of staple in certain points of the staples lenght. The latter causes a higher left hand, extends the scale’s intervalls and the octaves. Then the absolute tuning to be adjusted. The reed has to be pulled out of the chanter for one or two millimeters until again 440 Hz is reached.
Please report
Christian Tietje, Seligenstadt, Germany
- which doesn’t mean opening the cone in the same angle at every millimeter of it’s lenght.