Brian has been working on a new staple design.
The research has been worth the effort and the cost as the reeds are sounding great.
The main differances between the new and old staples are:
The material. This is stainless steel.
Method of production. The staples are machined all over giving greater accuracy and reproductability.
The bore shape of the staple has been extensivley researched to give optimum tone and tuning.
Special tooling has been produced to shape the difficult to machine stainless steel.
Unfortunately they cost more to produce.
As with previous designs of reed we keep reeds in stock and they can usually be dispached on receiving a PayPal order. Other methods of payment are, of course available.
Howard reeds are designed to work in many makes of chanter and according to our customers they do work well.
So if you want a good strong back D a good hard and soft D as well in tune second octave why not try one. www.howardmusic.co.uk
I am a lucky first customer of this new design (borrowed, I think, from oboe/bassoon staple manufacture). As far as I undertstand it, it is a different way to make a staple vis-a-vis conventional designs for uilleann pipes, which are either 1. rolling a staple from sheet metal (e.g., copper) or 2. forming brass hobby tubing into a staple. Brian now takes a cylindrical rod of stainless steel and milles it on a special lathe as if it were a minature chanter. So, it is conical inside (maybe outside as well) and includes perturbations to improve tone.
The Howard reed I was playing was of the old design and I thought it was working about as well as I could expect an uilleann chanter reed to perform. The new reed, after a few minor adjustments – moving the bridle and positioning it in the tuning slide – outperformed it, especially in the upper octave.
Kudos to Brian for more innovation in uilleann pipe design!
I guess I must be getting old. I was about to say that I thought 51 quid was a bit steep, but that’s because I haven’t had to buy a reed in 20 years or so. A quick comparison of chanter reed prices reveals that the new Howard reed is a bargain:
Howard: $81
Pat Sky: ~$80
Kirk Lynch: $100
Tim Britton: $120
the exception–Martin Gallen of Banba Design: ~$25
So get them while they’re hot. Anyone tried one in a K&Q chanter?
Out of interest - why is it that Reeds for Uilleann chanters are more than three times as expensive as reeds for Northumbrian pipe chanters? They don’t take any longer to make and use the same materials?
Ged
Because up to this point they could charge what they want, now that Martin gallen is on the scene hopefully that might change. The other theory is that most pipemakers dont really want to be making reeds anyway ,so they charge prices that would put off most pipers and so encourage the piper to make their own reeds.
The ss machined staple is a great idea. The addition of perturbations is not to improve tone, but to improve tuning. He has done particularly well in this and has been working on staple tuning for years.
UP staples are more than twice as long as NSP or SSP staples. The heads are longer too. Perhaps the price difference is due to materials costs. One pipe maker claimed increased cost of ABW to be the reason for a price jump of thousands of dollars for a set.
I have not seen these machined staples, but I am curious to know if they offer advantages to staples produced by other processes, for instance, swaging, spinning, or stretching, (or even rolling, as quaint as that technique might be viewed.)
Well I have not tried a stainless steel one yet i have tried the previous brass varieties in a large bore Sean McAloon chanter and it performed very well, as always the tuning was impeccable. The tone was very sweet and very easy to play. I would only imagine that the current design modification would only improve that further
I can’t say if there is an advantage to machining vs. other processes, but using a reamer may give great accuracy in the bore of the staple . I understand perturbations are added to the bore for fine tuning. The biggest advantage is in the bore design itself. Brian has been working on it for years. Earlier designs were good but he has improved it even more, yielding a reed that works in a broad range of chanters. I got a private report of one of these reeds in both Haneman and O’Briain D chanters. The reeds sounded good, but were a tiny bit sharp in the second octave. That could easily be fixed by adding a wire rush in the staple bore. The other advantage is low corrosion in the stainless steel. I have seen some old brass and copper staples that were in use for years. The corrosion had built up in the bore causing tuning problems. A brass cleaner and a mini brush cleaned out the corrosion and they were restored to their former state. Stainless steel would be an improvement as to corrosion.
I would not expect one of these reeds to work properly in one of my D chanters. They require considerably larger staples than the tube staples commonly used nowadays, unless the head is (in my opinion) far too wide. Narrowing the staple with a rush is just the opposite of what I would expect/recommend. Ted, are you sure the second octave was not flat instead of sharp, in my chanter?
Hi Bill,
I did not see the chanters in question, along with the reed, but am reporting what was said to me by someone who did not wanted to be quoted here. I have heard other reports of these reeds working in large bore chanters (Rowsome copies) as well as some that take tubing staples. Go figure. Brian has been working on the acoustics of staples for years. These reeds do not have a wide head either. You may expect what you want of them, but the proof is in the pudding. You can always try one and return it if it does not suit.
One pipe maker claimed increased cost of ABW to be the reason for a price jump of thousands of dollars for a set.