Thanks for correcting my error Mr. Gumby. Sorry if I confused the matter.
Yes, the Froment set is straightforward- or perhaps I should call it straightforwardly complicated.
The Williams is mysteriously complicated. The now-absent high reg (shall we call it a soprano?) wouldn’t need an extended bar, and there are much less awkward ways to build a contrabass. So what is the returning section of the paperclip doing?
I can only gues at what the thinking behind the Guilloux/Williams paperclip was but the set it was modelled on or inspired by, the Vandeleur Moloney, has a seriously long contrabass reg and the trombone style bend seems to act as a shared air supply. I handled that set during the eighties in the National Museum but my memories of the details are sketchy so there’s a degree of guesswork there. I do remember the huge bore and holes on the big bass reg and the fact the set was left in full sunlight on the windowsill of the room where the pipes were kept at the time.
Other solutions have been used, out board feeds and all that. Here’s the Ferguson-Egan, inexpertly put together for the photo (by the museum curators, I would assume) :
Has anyone gotten the Vandaleur playing this side of the invention of video recording?
As far as I know there have been no attempts at getting the Vandeleur (note spelling) going. Leo Rowsome was the last to have a go I believe.
Here are a few more examples of the big yokes. Joe Doyle and his Johnny Bourke and Ronnie with his Wooff:
And Tommy Kearney playing a 4 reg Froment C. Alain had me playing that set, perhaps hoping to convince me it was superior to my own C set
(no thanks, I am fine..). It weighed a ton so I passed it on to Tommy Kearney after a while under the ruse of wanting to hear him do his version of The Castle of Dromore. It’s all very long ago now.
And another Egan pic, found in a forgotten corner of my hard drive:
Leo Rowsome had the set playing in the 1920s or 1930s (?). There are a few articles about it. I believe Chief O’Neil mentions the set.
Was it the Vandaleur set that Leo plays on the Drones & the Chanters Vol 1?
I have been trying to remember the name of the 1938 movie R.L O’Mealy was iin since this thread started . It came to me eventually:
There’s not a lot of it but it’s something.
This thread is becoming a wonderful resource on these big sets! Thank you all- and particular thanks Mr Gumby for the wonderful photos!
Though by no means stop if there is more!
There’s always more but perhaps we shouldn’t overdo it 
I can’t help but thnk when looking at those big sets what the player’s motivation could have been when they commissioned their instrument. We all know of a few pipers who march up to a maker and want ‘five regulators, sterling silver and big balls of ivory’ as their main objective. And most of us will have heard the obvious jokes. The thing is, there are very few contemporary pipers who make extensive use of all the extra hardware. More than a few realise very quickly there’s an awful lot of extra weight and bits that get in the way.
Perhaps the story of Pat Fitzpatrick is illustrative. O’Neill describes the process of him getting the Taylors to make him a massive instrument.
If you listen to his 78rpm recordings though, the only note he uses on that expanse of keywork is the low G which he hits at the end of each part, each time all the time. Plop. Almost hypnotic in its repetitiveness. Perhaps ‘it’s a great conversation piece’ (is that a Monty Python quote?) applies to these things?
I can’t help but think when looking at those big sets what the player’s motivation could have been when they commissioned their instrument
I stand by my description of them as a “piece of showmanship”, certainly if ordered by a professional musician - useful as an advertising tool but less so in playing. Though in the case of things like the Vandeleur set (which, to be fair, is one of my favourite historic instruments) it might be more to do with rich dilettantes being talked into buying the biggest set of optional add-ons available.
Though in the case of things like the Vandeleur set (which, to be fair, is one of my favourite historic instruments) it might be more to do with rich dilettantes being talked into buying the biggest set of optional add-ons available.
Not sure the Vandeleur family was talked into anything but the set ruined the Moloneys when the Vandeleurs refused to take it off them anmd nobody else could afford to pay them for the work.
Does anyone else ever find some of the old greats lacking a bit of, I suppose, musicality? They are no doubt better pipers than I’ll ever be and I get that they were showmen playing to the cheap seats, but even accounting for the quality of recording, a lot of the early stuff seems to me to be a bit robotically fast, and not terribly expressive.
It may be that our modern expectations of phrasing have diverged from those of the past, and it’s clear that they were capable of playing any way they liked, so it’s not a skill question, but more of taste and how it changes.
(I believe it has no drones or something like that, that’s my memory of it anyway).
I recall reading about this thing as well, I think it had neither drones nor chanter and was used in a church somewhere.
but even accounting for the quality of recording, a lot of the early stuff seems to me to be a bit robotically fast, and not terribly expressive
I think the recording medium isn’t particularly kind to the pipes; all you hear is the chanter with most of the sound attenuated, occasionally a snatch of drones in the background. Given the way piping seems to have been taught in the past directly from player to player largely without formalised / written methods, I find it very difficult to imagine that the expressive techniques we hear now weren’t used in the 18th or 19th centuries
Does anyone else ever find some of the old greats lacking a bit of, I suppose, musicality?
Not sure we should equate old with great. Some of the old players who were recorded were downright awful and some of the really great ones never were (commercially) recorded. Not a lot has changed, perhaps.
A very fair point! But to compare like for like, I can’t think of any old recording I’ve heard that has the nuance of phrasing or expression of say, Liam O’Flynn. Even for dance music, being faster and less tolerant to varying the tempo, I feel like one gets more complexity from, let’s say post war, top notch pipers than what we have recorded from the early 1900s.
And I have no doubt that pipers of the same skill lived and played back then and would have influenced the style (even if they didn’t record). That’s why I wonder if the taste has shifted.
Though no doubt the appeal of watching a piper show off pure speed and dexterity has always existed. Such things are fun to listen to… once.
Ofcourse tastes have changed, styles have changed. But Dinny Delaney, Mici ‘Cumba’, Martin Reilly, whatever little glimpses of their playing we have, should give an indication of what was out there in skill and complexity.
It is very hard to build a coherent picture of what was out there based on the few surviving fragments.
Perhaps Touhey is a case in point. When I was learning only the few commercial sides he recorded on 78 rpm and a few cylinders that were available, mostly Henebry’s and a few that escaped from Busby’s basement, helped us build a certain image of his playing. But as the Busby collection became fully available and later the O’Neil cylinders a far wider view emerged and it became clear the scope of his style and repertoire was much broader than the picture we had formed earlier. Some of it really surprised me. We rely on an incomplete view, built on the few fragments we have, what was handed down through the playing of others and stories and reputations that came down. But we can never know or even remote grasp what, say, Garret Barry sounded like. I dare say though, his playing may have surprised us.
Didn’t O Mealy make 3-reg sets with contrabass? He left off the small reg IIRC.
I did that when I got an E reg, I put it in place of the small reg, which I hadn’t been using much anyway.
http://pipers.ie/source/media/?galleryId=1088&mediaId=26894
Another mechanically interesting set of pipes, the O’Hannigan Coyne. Seems a bit neater than the Colgan / Moloney type trombone arrangements
Another set from from the museum. NPU has a similar Coyne that Geoff restored, went on loan to Nollaig MacCartaigh for a while. I played that a good bit when work was ongoing, I have pics of it but have not scanned them.
I do have this one but the extention was taken off there. Geoff and Nollaig at the offical presentation of the restored instrument (the work was grant aided so all official business with speeches and a representative of the body that provided funds, you can probably look it up in the Piobaire, with pics):
Note it also has an outboard feed with nothing connected. Likely for a now vanished e reg.
While at it, here is one of Dickie with his Wooff (and you can see he’s actually using the low D on the bass extention in the G chord he is playing:
The Vandaleur set is in which pitch - Bnat, Bb, etc.?