“My question is: does the chanter have a dampening effect on the reed itself?
Or on the energy created by the reed?”
Yes.
A simple experiment: Take a drumstick or any piece of wood (preferably not a hammer 
) and knock against the chanter/flute. I hope you can tell a difference.
I believe this is the wrongminded/intuitive supposition that Bill H. was referring to. Though it may sound counterintuitive, try thinking of it this way:
In a xylophone, the larger the stick, the lower the pitch. In the woodwind, the larger the bore the sharper the pitch. The bore is negative space, or absence of mass, the wood block is positive space, or presence of mass. It is undeniably the bore, and not the tube material, that is responsible for the tone.
Although the bore reflects the soundwave on its way down the tube, the reflecting material does not contribute anywhere near as much to the soundwave emitted as does the reed, which is responsible for creating the soundwave in the first place. Soundwaves do not “knock” on the chanter like a drumstick, they pass through the chanter, and are marginally depleted by the smoothness of the bore and the density of the material. Now, if depletion of your elbow grease is the goal, by all means, get yourself a balsa chanter with a rough bore. If you want all that you are pushing for, a chanter made of glass may be the way to go. A smooth grained hardwood chanter strikes the oft-desired balance. Box is a traditional wood native to bagpipe playing regions, and denser rosewoods have some advantages.
Believe it or not the sound generated by the vibrating walls of the chanter are only 1/10,000th of that given out from the holes.
RORY
[quote="uillmann]
I believe this is the wrongminded/intuitive supposition that Bill H. was referring to. [/quote]
Of course I did not mean this seriously but I totally agree with Mark and Bill.
I did not mean to imply that I thought the chanter was somehow resonating in a way that was perceptible to the ear. My main question was whether or not the physical energy in the vibration of the reed was in any way altered by being coupled to the chanter. If you took a hollow stick with no tone holes and stuck a reed in one end and pulled air though the other, would the overall tonal quality in the “crow” of the reed change depending on what the stick was made of?
I am having a difficult time imagining such an instrument, but my guess is that it would be more responsive if it were made out of PVC than out of rubber surgical tubing.
the reed is the exciter, the thing that produces the actual sound, the high pitch squeeky sound at that, its not until the reed is insert into the body of the chanter that the bigger sound is produced, the soundwave travels up and down the chanter wall as well as the chanter bore which also acts as a small sound chamber were the sound wave is amplified, tone dos not effect a given note played, tone effects the sound of a given note played, its brightness - sweetness or how dull or dead a note may sound, of course the wood or what ever material the chanter is made of will have a degree of resonance, even the earth has a resonance freqency some where around 7.5hertz if I remember right as it rotates. 