Well, my dedication paid off. Turns out this character’s site is not only back up at a new URL, but he’s linked or re-linked to at least a couple of good makers and is still using big-name endorsements, (Francie Mc Peake III at this time) so you can all give him a call at his new phone number (if it works and he doesn’t hang up on you pretending to have a bad connection over and over) or try his new email (if it doesn’t come back claming he’s exceeded his mailbox or is returned for some other error for the next couple of years) or go look up the new address that is markedly different from the one the at which he was known to reside scarce weeks ago.
The only significant change I can see is the removal of one or two implied endorsements, and the removal of some drawings or modification of the reedmaking graphics “borrowed” from another reedmaker’s site.
Check the “repairman’s” site first:
http://www.geocities.com/uilleann_pipe_reeds/
Then check:
http://home.wxs.nl/~HartDD/Reed/reed7.html
And I think you’ll see where those (I think new) photos came from.
1 Links to this “repairman’s” site are on Seth Gallegher’s site again. This I think is where I finally decided years ago the guy must be legit because my main stick is a Gallegher and Seth is very particular about who makes reeds for his chanters etc, and I didn’t think Seth would want anyone other than himself working on his chanter as implied by linking to this guy unless he was a class act. Seth also had a look at the chanter before sending it to O’Hare and was the one who first tentatively identified it as a Johnny Burke, probable an early/variant work. (Turned out O’Dowd, but close.)
2 Links to this site are on Alan Ginsberg’s web site again/still.
3 O’Hare’s page one quote:
“Along with his style and some new ideas of my own I have found this to be an extremely effective style of reedmaking. So much so that any set of pipes I have come across, my style of reedmaking has never failed to give a perfect 440 pitch along with a rich and sweet tone.”
This is manifestly untrue, not even his apologists have made this argument on his behalf, and most argued that this is an impossible claim and I am an unfair fool for trying to claim he made it. Since he obviously never got a reed to work at all in my case and went to hacking up the chanter in a desperate and wholly unskilled, ignorant attempt to live up to this claim, this ad copy constitutes grossly false advertising.
4 “Acknowledgements” page quote:
“An on a final note (hahahaha) if you cant be bothered to make reeds and you need pipes either restored, repaired in anyway or just need reeds made then contact me also. Below are my contact details…”
His best apologists here have claimed him to be but a “schoolboy” and suggested that I have pressured him into taking this sort of work against his will it seems, and that I am “abusing” him by making public complaint and offering my warning to others against these claims this “boy” has made, as a result of his patently brutal butchery of my chanter.
Oddly enough, his greatest proponents have thus far only disparaged my “attitude,” invented elaborate, conspiratorial fantasy scenarios to explain why I’d just whack my own chanter to pieces, or why this “boy” should be commended for not returning it to me because of my gruff tone, yet not one has come forward to say, “I know him, he’s made me great reeds, and rebuilt my Kennedy’s, or Coynes, or Rowesomes, or Taylors beautifully.”
A couple of noted pipe makers and players from this forum have in fact informed me privately and publicly here that he is a wee lad, has no shop, no training in pipe making or repairing, and as I have seen personally, no tools to speak of, doesn’t seem to own or have access to a reamer of any sort, apparently including a decent round file or supply of sandpaper and a bit to make a hole with and then smooth it out a bit. And, how then was I, or would anyone else be able to surmise this from his web site? It should be plain to all that this wholly commercial, entirely self- promotional advertising copy is clearly intended to deceive the potential customer, isn’t it?
5 Picture from web site:
This site photo is the same as the one up for at least three years, I saw it two and a half years ago, and my best guess from the photo would have been late teens, 17-18 to early 20’s. Again, that was three years ago. He doesn’t look much like a little “schoolboy” to me.
So, go to my own photos and short commentaries:
http://home.comcast.net/~pmlerwick/wsb/html/view.cgi-image.html--SiteID-1228572.html
Have a look, and ask yourself if you really want to send anything overseas for reeding to this guy. You have all the information on both sides, I’ve been fair about it.
If you’d sent a chanter off to this “schoolboy” and got it back only after two years of trying to find him, trying to get somebody to knock on his door and personally retrieve it, only to find he’d obviously clamped it in a vise or pliers leaving huge, gouged channels in the side, that every hole had been filled very crudely and moved down a good centimeter or so, that the filled holes weren’t even completely finished off, that there were drill skitters and divots around every hole he worked, that the final holes were double their original size (meaning they could have as well just stayed put as the size defeated the move) and inside were a collection of splinters as the holes had been ripped through more than drilled and left jagged, that all the pins had been removed and beaver-chewed, then forced back in randomly in the wrong blocks so some stuck out and some were stuffed way into the wood, that having lost or destroyed one pin, the Fnat key was just sent along loose, the “repairman” manifesting no ability to simply make another one, and that after all that time and effort, not only was no reed of any sort produced, much less the allegedly universally successfull, perfectly tuned and toned O’Hare Special, but despite paying in advance over twice the going rate for a reed, and then paying again 18 pounds postage to somebody else who would actually get what was left of the chanter from him and put it in the mail, that the brand-new reed sent out from a real reedmaker for comparison was kept or lost or destroyed as well, and never came back, would you be happy?
And all complaints about non-playability non-craftsmanship aside, forget the obvious fact that the only thing he could have probably “re-reamed” this chanter with as he claimed, would have been a big fat twist drill down the throat just to see what it did, I would have simply never got this thing back at all. The “lad” would have simply taken my 100 pounds sterling, kept the new reed I sent him, and left it thrown carelessly in the grimey corner it was obviously dug out of when finally collected.
But please, lets just drop this “poor beset schoolboy” nonsense, because this character has been and is now still broadcasting on my side of the pond, aggressively advertising his advanced skill and experience in reed making and “pipe repair.” He’s got a new host and new endorsements and he’s making very very bold claims and soliciting people to send their instruments to him for “any sort” or repair or reedmaking. The second you do that you become a “public personality” and legally, morally, fair game for complaints about your marketing claims in particular.
I have a few.
Royce
-rimshot- these are the jokes, folks…
