What are people’s thoughts on the possibility (or impossibility!) of making a set of drones that will work well to both D and C sharp chanters?
Anybody tried this or any other double?
Regards, Harry.
Are you looking for extended length drones to slide back and forth so you can switch between chanters and just re-tune?
I once tried short pieces of plastic drinking straws to extend a D down to C… not that I would admit it in public 
it worked for my experiment.
So the question then: can D drones be re-reeded to play well at C# ??
delete
There’s problems with “tuneable” drones.
If you are switching between chanters, you will obviously have pressure difference, so stabilising the drones will always be a problem.
If you try to make a reed to produce a lower pitch, you will generally have to make a longer, wider reed with a wider longer tongue. It’s most likely that the reed will just shut when you try to sound it.
How about 6 drones with a switch so you can change to your preffered pitch. (tongue in cheek smiley).
Alan
SIX DRONES! We’re getting way too close to pianoaccordionism there! 
My B drones (and I suspect a great many other sets of drones) can tune down a semitone without any great change in pressure (although the drone heads do hang off precariously in my case).
I have a narrowish bore Kennedy D chanter and drones on the way, and a Coyne style Csharp chanter. The D chanter is to be set light to play as I only want it for tipping along behind people in sessions (and I’m NOT into concert pitch arm wrestling!). The C sharp chanter could easily be set up with a similar pressure (or vice versa). So I was thinking along the lines of simply extending the slide section of the drones to allow C sharp tuning as Sean mentions above. Do-able???
Regards, Harry.
I may just be showing ignorance here but would it be possible to make an adjustable 3-piece chanter or drones with different sized inserts to shorten or lengthen the bore to change the pitch? Like a 3-piece whistle. The hole spacing might not work out for the chanter though, but the drones… . I don’t know. Just wondering.
It shouldn’t be difficult to get a semitone of play out of any drone, I would say, though to be fair the optimal range would probably be D-1/4tone to D+1/4 tone. My smallpipe drones can all go down by a tone, and If I’m feeling really masochistic I can tune them up a tone as well, though I’ve long since come to the conclusion that drones shouldn’t be at the tonic of a minor key. It also requires mucking around with the reeds.
Northumbrian makers have drone switches, which can increase the pitch by a tone; if you’re after a set of drones for switching between two chanters, it might be profitable (productive might be a better word; profitable it ain’t) to speak to someone like Ray Sloan who makes both.
http://www.raysloan.com/img/northpic.gal/f.mtd..jpg
Shows the drone switch (yep, the link is correct) - as you can see, it just looks like a regulator tuning pin.
As for doing this with a chanter, I don’t know if it’s possible with chanter physics; if it is, you’d need a big chanter, as in B/Bb or thereabouts; I understand that when you try to do this with flutes, it’s only really effective with the bigger ones, such as Eb’s and the like; with the smaller ones in D you get pitch distortion. I could probably squeeze another semi-colon in there; I don’t think I’ll bother, though.
Cheers,
Calum
Geez, by the time you’re done futtzing with this stuff you could have bought a new set in the other keys you’re interested in.
Kennedy makes UPs in D wide and small bore, C#, C, B. I’ve been trying to convince him to make the stock easily swappable so that you could use the same bag and bellows (less crap to haul around). Then you could bring a couple of sets to whatever event you’re attending. You never know when everyone else is going to show up a session or tional with that one obscure UP key you didn’t bring.
djm
Uilleann Pipe Obsessive Acquisition Syndrome??? 
Boyd
djm,
You must excuse me for considering one duo functioning set of drones handier than having two sets of drones to carry around! 
I have since been in touch with Joe and as it turns out the chanter he is playing himself at the moment is in C sharp… with D based drones!
While he feels that this set up is a bit ‘drone heavy’ at the moment he thinks that ‘duo drones’ (C sharp/ D) are achieveable with some reed tweaking.
I’m not concerned with having EVERY key available, but a D half set that couples as a C sharp half set at the cost of just a C sharp chanter makes a world of sense to this mild obsessive. 
Regards, Harry.
Harry,
Tis a glorious affliction, is it not? 
djm
The whistlers have no idea… 