Guess I should chime in on this one… (it’s an oddly phrased question though, are you asking from the point of view of a potential customer, or a potential maker?)
Apologies in advance for the detailed reply. If you hate minutiae then just scroll on by…
Well, actually there is one… Ronan is playing it nowadays (he hasn’t used the Hunter B in a good few years). The more recent recordings of Ronan and Peadar (and Ronan solo, in B) use the Harrington B chanter.
It sounds great in his hands but so much of that is the player - even though that chanter is a treasure, it is not totally unmodified from its original state.
It’s true that there isn’t any Harrington B chanter data floating around out there in public, at least AFAIK, and I am unaware of any other Harrington B chanter that has survived (there’s one other that may be Harrington but the attribution is in doubt). I think I’d steer most people towards Coyne where B is concerned, from my experience Coyne B chanters are really lovely sounding, easy to play and well behaved.
Mostly the difference in the sets is cosmetic. Harrington made fancier stuff.
Not sure I would agree with the first of those points; the bores and tonalities seem quite different. The fanciness in Harrington seems, IMO, mostly restricted to the elaborate bass regulator finial which is present on at least some Harrington sets, and in the ‘double mounts’ on drone and regulator end caps - otherwise both makers seem to have made fancy and not-so-fancy models. Most of the Harrington mounts seem to have been horse bone, except for the pieces whose size required them to be ivory.
You’d have to talk to someone who’s actually played both or made good copies to have an idea of what’s under the hood.
Egan sets seem a bit different sonically - listen to Paddy Moloney on the early Chieftains LPs, or Pat McNulty’s Autumn Apples, to hear Egan C. Or the C set on Willie Clancy’s Pipering Vol. 2, which is the same Egan Paddy’s playing. Ronan Browne plays Harrington B (with Peter Hunter chanter). Willie on Pipering Vol 2 and Robbie Hannon have Coyne B.
The Coyne chanter that Willie is playing is, if it’s the chanter I think it is, rather atypical (again, not quite in its original condition). Robbie’s chanter is comparatively pristine, at least toneholes and bore - indeed it may be Coyne and it greatly resembles Coyne inside and out, but there is some possibility that it is late Kenna, as Robbie has always maintained it to be. (In some light one can see what appears to be a faint shamrock stamp).
Another Coyne B set is the “Busby” Coyne that Nollaig occasionally plays. Again, there are some questions about whether the chanter is in pristine condition. The Coyne B whose data was published by John Hughes in SRS (v1 or 2?) is indeed pristine and plays very well, and the measurements were very carefully made. Several people have used those figures successfully, including myself.
Pat Sky published measurements of his Kenna B chanter in SRS as well - nobody mentioned Kenna! That would be my second suggestion for B I think.
Egan doesn’t seem to have made any sets in B, at least as far as I know; there are a number of “Bflat” Egans (actually rather sharp of modern Bflat, but well flatter than “B”). Most Egans are either in that pitch or in/around C, the only exception I know of is cormacc’s set which is a bit sharper.
The trouble with Egan, at least at the moment, is that it seems no one has totally figured out how to reed them “optimally”. Cormac and Benedict K. have both come tantalizingly close, enough to suggest that Egan is a path worth pursuing. Benedict at least once referred to this sound as “the clear Egan tone” and I think I know what he means - a bit less buzzy than Coyne/Kenna/etc., maybe a big louder/bigger, but still maintaining the richness of narrow bore. Egan bores are indeed bigger than the other guys’, sort of a simple convex “bullet” or “sword” shape in profile, whereas the other bores are more “complex”/squiggly. I think Dan Dowd’s set as featured on Drones and Chanters v1 is an Egan as well. (Some of the old cylinder recordings feature Egan, probably, but it can be hard to judge tone from those).
As Kevin says, though, where sound is concerned you just have to hear them for yourself, and as far as looks, you have to seek out examples. Both are really personal matters. (It’s also true that great tone does not always correlate with easy to play/good behavior, though it often does…) There are loads of pictures on PDarcy’s uilleannobsession.com site, in the Diary sections over several years. He has a google widget on the site, I think, to help you search for stuff…
It seems pretty definite to me, from my experiences and conversations, that even given the same data and ‘model instrument’, and working to comparable ‘quality’, the “copies” from different pipemakers will differ quite a bit in character; personal nuances in the reeding/voicing process seem to make a huge difference.
Best regards,
Bill
