Its all very everyone saying that there is a difference ,but can anyone offer some concrete evidence why there is a difference, because there is loads of evidence to say there is no difference!!!
RORY
How do you figure, Rory?
ALL of it is hearsay, you have just decided that the people in the “no difference” camp have “evidence” and those in the “there’s a difference” camp don’t.
Nothing that’s been put forth has been concrete evidence . . . unless you’ve got some kind of actual evidence you’re holding back.
Stuart
I firmly believe there is a difference - so there 
The box feels buzzier and rounds out the higher harmonics I think.
PD.
According to the principals of acoustics ,there are two factors that control the tone of any instrument ,one ,is the method the vibration is set in motion(in this case the reed )and two is the composition of the harmonics.The composition of the harmonics are governed by the internal dimensions of the tube containing the column of vibrating air (the bore)and thats it !!!
The actual material the tube is made of has no influence!!
RORY
So why does it feel and sound different then?
PD.
Because as much as people think the chanters they are comparing are indenticle they are not !
RORY
I agree with you there but there is more to it than simply a slighlty different design. The whole thing feels different. I’m not about to trust any scientists either… they only know what they know until they are convinced of something else. 
… y’know, flat earth, sea monsters, global warming etc.
PD.
That’s not it at all! According to Nederveen (acoustical aspects of woodwind instruments)
“Still a hot item is the possible influence of wall vibrations on the sound quality.” and “… but the following observation about decant recorders indicates that vibrations of the recorder bodies can be a factor.”
So not so simple is it.
Evertjan
Evertjan, the boxwood chanter appears slightly longer than the ebony chanter. Is that correct, or is it just the photo? (Nice looking chanters, BTW)
It’s the photo they are the same.
Evertjan
Can you point me at some of that evidence that there is no difference? I haven’t seen it. I’ve heard about the concrete flute experiment, but that’s hardly loads of evidence and not even an uilleann pipe chanter. I’ve seen theoretical explanations of why there should be no difference, but that’s not at all the same thing.
There are at least 2 different questions here:
- Is there a difference?
- If so, why?
My own experience (described earlier in this thread) is that there is indeed a difference. Let me add that, as a relative newcomer to the uilleann pipes, I did not have any expectation at the time of that comparison that the box and ebony chanters would sound different. Rather the opposite was true: things I had read here and elsewhere made me suspect that there was no real difference, or that the difference would be very subtle and my unsophisticated ears wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
As far as I’m concerned, this is concrete evidence that there is a difference. My experience is just 1 data point, but it seems to fit with the experience of others. I have yet to see any reports of evidence to the contrary. If you’ve had the opportunity to play otherwise identical chanters made from different materials and observed no difference in sound, it would be interesting to hear about that.
The 2nd question is more interesting to me, but I have no answers. It may just be that different types of wood respond differently to the same reamer, and that the resulting differences in the bore are responsible for the difference in tone. I’m curious about that, but from a practical perspective, the only thing that matters is which one sounds better to me.
I seem to recall, that according to the science of aeronautics that a bumblebee can’t fly, yet it does. About twenty years ago, I participated in a test of eleven chanters by the same maker, from the same reamer. We tried the same reed in all of them. All five ebony chanters had similar tone. The three boxwood chanters had similar tone, but remarkably different than the ebony ones. The three blackwood sticks were also similar to each other in tone, but different than the other timbers. Another friend, a flute player, was asked to sit with his back to us, so he could not see which chanter was being played. He could easily identify and group the chanters by timber type correctly. He said the box was the most mellow while the ebony and blackwood were more similar in tone, with the blackwood being the brightest. I asked an acoustical engineer about this. He was well aware of the old concrete flute story. He was a clarinet player, and felt that the science had not deeply investigated the phenomenon of the observable, and measurable differences in tone in woodwind instruments due to using different timbers. He said that at the time he could not offer a scientific explanation, but also said every player he knew that had listened to the phenomena, could attest to the differences. He felt that with enough investigation, that there would someday be a scientific explanation. I guess no one has yet funded such a study. For Rory, this may not be evidence enough, but I remain convinced by the empirical evidence to disregard the THEORY (and it is a theory, not a fact) to which he clings.
Your right Ted ,its not enough ,your experiments are based on opinions ,and opinions can be wrong!!!
But I also think that some are not grasping the idea of what identicle chanters means,the fact is, that identicle chanters dont exist ,there are no two chanters even if the wood come from the same tree that are identicle,the grain could be slightly different and would ream differently,maybe slightly more rougher at a certain point an unseen knot in the bore ,anything can make a difference !!!
RORY
Physicist John Backus wrote:
“For many years there has been discussion and argument on the question of the influence of the wall material of a woodwind instrument on its tone quality. These arguments probably started in early Stone Age musical circles with assertions that a flute made of a human thigh bone had a better tone than one fashioned from the rib of a sabre-tooth tiger.”
Nancy Toff, in The Flute Book, writes:
“Almost nothing can start an argument among flutists faster than a discussion of the relative merits of various materials for constructing flutes…The scientific arguments are too lengthy and techincal to be of much interest or assistance to the flutist… Among players the choices between materials are largely unscientific, a matter of tradition and intangible personal preference…”
“These preferences are often factors perceptible only to the player, not the audience. About fifteen years ago I participated in a trial of two Lamberson flutes, one gold, one sterling silver, a scene undoubtedly repeated at many times in many places. With backs turned, a group of students listened to our teacher alternate between the two instruments, noting which one we thought we had heard. Our accuracy record was notably poor and the results were inconclusive. When we each played the two instruments ourselves, however, we had strong personal preferences.”
Though these remarks are about classical Boehm flutes, my experience with Irish flutes has been similar. Irish flutes made of boxwood play remarkably different from flutes by the same maker of blackwood. The difference to the player is much greater than the difference to the listener.
But a story which may have more relevance to piping- it has been mentioned a number of times above that the same reamer was used, in order to imply that two chanters of different materials had identical bores. Some years ago at the convention of the National Flute Society I happened upon the booth of Ralph Sweet. He had around ten rosewood and ten maple Irish flutes in D on display. I played them all and found that the maple flutes had a bigger, fuller, stronger sound than the rosewood. Then I began taking off the headjoints and sticking my finger in the top of the body section, a crude go no-go gauge as it were. I found that the maple flutes had a bigger bore, which explained the bigger sound. Ralph himself was puzzled. “They HAVE to be the same. I use the same reamer, the same number of passes…” Then a lightbulb came on in his head. “Of course! The maple is softer, and the reamer takes away more wood!” The remarkable thing about this is that the person who has made more Irish flutes than all the other makers in the world put together (not counting Pakistan) would be completely unaware of the actual dimensions of the bores of his instruments.
The moral of the story is that chanters made by the same maker using the same reamer do not necessarily have the same bore.
It’s a good story. Having read a lot of fascinating texts on the physics (and science) of acoustic instruments (Fletcher&Rossing, Nederveen) my overall impression was that the general opinion was that there was no scientific evidence or scientific reason that the construction would have any effect on timbre.
However most of the acoustic physicists I’ve read or talked with will always temper that by saying most instrument makers and players will say the exact opposite and that there’s something to be said for people with keen perception noticing something that can’t be explained with science.
When you get right down to it, who’s to say that even at the sub-atomic level, or at the level of the wood-structure there’s something that influences the partials that contribute to the overall timbre of the instrument.
You’re not a scientist, are you Rory? Any theory must be supported by experiments, and if the experimental evidence is not consistent with a theory, then the theory gets replaced. So, yes, of course opinions can be wrong, and so can scientific theories, but experiments never lie (unless they are flawed or are not really testing the hypothesis in question).
I’ve seen similar discussions regarding high-end audio equipment. E.G., can anyone hear the difference between $100/ft. speaker wire (or whatever the really high-end stuff goes for) and some basic wire of a reasonable guage for $1/ft or so. From what I had read, I expected the boxwood vs. ebony issue to be the same sort of thing. And then I got to hear the difference! In comparison to the hi-fi nonsense, the difference is HUGE.
I agree that identical chanters do not exist, but who cares? If you’re ordering a set of pipes and your pipemaker asks whether you want ebony or boxwood, you have a simple choice and what you get will sound different depending on that choice.
Back to the experimental evidence, it sounds like you have a theoretical bent, and you’re looking for an answer to the question of whether the material makes a difference or whether the bore entirely determines the sound. If that is true, then I agree that neither my experience nor Ted’s more thorough experiment answer the question. On the other hand, if you want to know whether a boxwood chanter will sound different than an ebony chanter from the same maker, Ted’s experiment gives a pretty clear answer.
By the way, Ted’s experiment indicates that your issues about grain variations and unseen knots are less significant than the type of timber. He stated that the tone of each timber was consistent across multiple chanters.
Rory may not be a scientist, but he does have the mind of an elephant! 
Actually I,m an elephant scientist !!!
RORY
YOU DA MAN!!!
t