I was wondering if any makers have experimented with making the regs with cylindrical (straight) bores rather than the traditional conical (tapered) bores.
This, I think, would have a number of advantages:
Couldn’t you just nail the first two by having properly set up reeds?
I believe Pat McNulty of Glasgow has made conical bore regulators.
In my experience, cylindrical chanters with double reeds are somewhat more sensitive to pressure changes than conical chanters (or maybe they react in a different way) so I don’t think cylindrical regs. would work very well. But hey, if you have the time to experiment then give it a go, then we would all know one way or the other!
Have a listen to Pat McNulty’s album, Autumn Apples. He plays the majority of tracks on a set of his own making which, I believe, had conical bore regulators.
A good point, in that they might react differently to changes in humidity and temperature than the chanter.
But, the uilleann pipes already have a mix of cylindrical and conical bores- the chanter and regs are conical, the drones are cylindrical.
By the way, the regs wouldn’t necessarily be double-reeded. They could have single reeds like Eastern European chanters and in effect be true “keyed drones”.
I think the main advantage would be the size. A bass reg could be the size of the present small reg and a contrabass reg would be a quite manageable size. (A cylindrical-bore Scottish smallpipe chanter is one octave deeper than a conical-bore Highland chanter of approximately the same length.) So you could have very deep, but mellow, regs.
One difference between conical & cylindrical bores is that to produce a given pitch a conical bore must be twice as long as a cylindrical bore. (Did I dream this? I think I’m right on this.) This would present some interesting complications for reg design. I’m thinking of overall length of the reg and of key placement. Or of the necessity for recurves in the bore, like with most UP bass drones.
Are there pictures on the Web of McNulty’s conical bore regs? How did he address these problems?
Nick Whitmer
Woops. I got it backwords. Ignore previous post.
“…a cone has to be twice as long as a cylindrical pipe if their lowest modes are to concide in frequency…”
-Arthur Benade, in Horns, Strings, and Harmony , Anchor Books, 1960, p. 171.
Still, how come a D chanter is so much shorter than a D flute?
Nick Whitmer
IMHO its because that principle its fullfilled in the melodic tubes that shares the same sound source, I mean single reed, double reed, or blowhole. What would happen if you add a blowhole to a D chanter?
Why try to reinvent the wheel? Just improve your reed making. Is the size really that important? If that’s your main concern, why not try a shuttle type drone/regulator configuration.
http://www.bagpipeworld.co.uk/British%20Isles/Union.htm
(bottom of the page)
Regarding sizes etc. of potential cylindically bored regulators ( or any other cylindrically bored pipe), I have the sums somewhere and a spreadsheet calculating hole positions if anyone is interested.
Cheers,
Charlie.
The regulator bores in the giant Taylor set, of the late Joe Shannon were straight; they were tiny and there were 16 of them. Each regulator had a bore for every key. You could play several notes at a time on a single regulator. The reeds were smaller than flat set reeds. A very interesting experiment.
There was one problem. The tone of the regulators were very metallic sounding with a tone closer to automobile horns than to Uilleann pipes.
All the best,
Pat Sky
Are you referring solely to straight-bore regs? Someone else told me that would be an impossibility, but we were talking about conical regs, and although I wasn’t sure I altogether took him at his word, I haven’t tried it just to see, either. Has anyone done this ever on conical regs, and are there reasons to not do it?
It seems I remember finding a maker a couple of years ago that put some keys on the baritone drone tuned to what the baritone reg would have, but I can’t find the link now. It also had some sound samples 
Ye are quite right 
but then nearly all pipemakers have made the regs wi conical bores??? 
Wouldn’t the holes be too close together to make this a practical proposition?
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
My father made a bass and a baritone reglator with a straight cylindrical bore in the late 1980’s. From what I remember about playing them was that they were extremely stable and only required a mere tap to get them to sound. The bores and hole positions were based on a northumbrian chanter, the key positioning took a fair bit of working out but didn’t end up too bad. The reeds were double reeds made out of yoghurt pots. The only problem was they sounded like two northumbrian chanters accompanying you!
I think he’s still got them lying around somewhere, I’ll get some photo’s and post them. If there’s some reeds lying around, I’ll try and get a sound sample too.
Jon
Yes that’s another issue- the lack of similarity of sound between the regs and the chanter.
I’d love to see photos and hear sound samples. Thanks!
Hello Jon
Is your Dad a well Known pipemaker?
(sounds like twenty questions)
RORY
P Sky wrote - The regulator bores in the giant Taylor set, of the late Joe Shannon were straight; they were tiny and there were 16 of them. Each regulator had a bore for every key. You could play several notes at a time on a single regulator. The reeds were smaller than flat set reeds. A very interesting experiment.
Think you may not be quite right here Pat as I have seen regulators based on this set and bores were definately conical - four of them neatly done in a single piece of wood in the Baritone and Tenor regulators.
Reading the sleeve notes of an LP that features this set it seems there was a total of 15 reeds that could be sounded at once
John
I just learned something, if you extrapolate the conical bore of a chanter to it’s apex you get a length that is the same as the cylindrical bore that produces the same note.
I used the data for BK’s C chanter on the DMQ CD and came up with an apex at 25.573". Considering that the bore encloses half of the sounding wavelength, this would give a wavelength of 51.15" (25.573 X 2) which is very close to the 51 11/16" given by Bart Hopkin for the note C4 (the bell note of this chanter) in “Musical Instument Design” p. 158
Cheers, David