Just got the Ginsberg C full set back from the jaws of disaster, all thanks to our own Dave Boisvert of Greenwood Pipes. All but two tiny original ivory bits have been tastefully replaced with faux ivory, the regs actually work now (and very well), and the chanter is now for all practical purposes spot-on. Oh, and it’s got a wooden chanter cap, swan neck, with a stop key. I could go on and on about what was changed here and there both cosmetic and acoustic, but suffice it to say that Davey made heroic efforts to rehab this set, and pulled it off and then some. It was a bit of a mongrel-looking thing before, but now looks all of a piece thanks to Davey’s keen eye with the new mounting profiles.
I’ll set up some more pics soon in the Pix thread. There are a number of details that I’d like to show about this set in its rehabbed condition, anyway. With the old-style straight drone, the whole set extends about 4 feet 5½ inches, a bit shy of 1.37 metres.
My cat’s happy the pipes are back. I keep it in my apartmernt on an upper shelf of the built-in living room hutch when I’m not working at it, and she likes to sit up there with the set.
Do nothing of the sort…instead, pour a nice, easy, full and handsome glass of the ‘stuff’, drink it, and then keep those fecking pipes in a friendly environment…add ‘stuff’ as needed.
You guys will never really know how funny that is, but it was in truth a jest based on the thread about humidifying/watering down pipes in the winter. Also based on some very interesting local advice that was floating, literally, floating around a season and two back but I think or I hope has been abandoned. Also involved spraying down the pipes to see if any air was bubbling out the tenon joints etc.
I’ve got a set of Dan O’Dowd pipes and the mainstock is cocobolo–was a bit wondering why, at a time when blackwood was easy and cheap, he used that instead, then have since read that those big chunks of blackwood are more prone to split/distort than less exotic woods–maybe like cocobolo, or I suppose apple, pear, etc.
Hedron head must be enjoying the pipes because he’s crapped out of two weekends of practices/sessions and at least yesterday his official excuse was staying home to play the pipes. Making me a bit jealous, but I hope to hear those “C” songs accompanied by pipes in the band some day maybe.
It’s a rather bit early to suggest that I’m enjoying this. Got my dues to pay, yet; I can tell that right now.
OK, I’m enjoying it.
BTW, Royce, enough with the misinformation. My official excuse was NO HOT WATER, and my state of hygeine was deplorable. Didn’t get hot water going in my slum until after 5:30pm, so exploring the pipes was the ticket. They didn’t seem to mind the sebaceousness and stink.
="NanohedronBTW, Royce, enough with the misinformation. My official excuse was NO HOT WATER, and my state of hygeine was deplorable. Didn’t get hot water going in my slum until after 5:30pm, so exploring the pipes was the ticket. They didn’t seem to mind the sebaceousness and stink.
Ah, the ol’ sebaceous glands. You know, as a baby they cover your entire body, but by puberty they center around…well too much of an exploration I suppose. But don’t say I can’t be diplomatic. I held back the hygeine angle in case you felt it too delicate to announce.
Personally, I have to get out of bed in the morning and drive six hours (probably take 8 with the stops at the waffle houses my dad will insist upon) to pipe my great aunt into the frozen North Dakota sod. I haven’t played Highland pipes in a year because of my back problem but with enough trussing up and some help via my favorite opiates and maybe a single malt scotch or some North Dakota Everclear, I might get the nerves dead and the muscles relaxed enough to both walk and play upright out of the chapel at the head of the procession.
I wish it were my UP, but I’m also glad I’m not trucking them across the upper midwest in probably the worst freezing-rain-turned white-out blizzard below-zero conditions of the entire year in a dried out Mercury Town Car, blowing the heat at high all the way trying to keep the windows clear.
If past history of this Xmas trek comes around again, I will probably be holed up in a farmstead in Minnewaukon for the rest of the week, till the county plows come to dig us out of the second floor snow door and miss Christmas at the old Minnesota homestead entirely, including the Sunday practice, which I might as well tell you the fiddler has cancelled because her best friend is in town, you know, the one that always shows up and is instantly more important than bands or music or life itself…so that’s another week shot to hell this winter.
