Ahh the changing seasons and the wonders they bring. My tenor and baritone drone have started to go wonky on me and I’ve been playing the guessing game without much success so thought I’d ask the advice of the wise sages here before I go and order composites.
The subject line gets at what’s happening. Things are fine until the air pressure drops a bit then, usually the bari but often the tenor, start making a horrible bleating whine. I’ve tried in various combinations: adding gunk, removing gunk, nudging o-ring up, nudging o-ring down and many combinations thereof.
I’ve also given the reed the stink-eye.
So, what is causing the bleating sadness? Too much weight on the tongue, not enough, too short or too long? These are cane tongues on brass bodies. Help reed physicists, help!
Those tongues sound like they are probably dogs. You might try springing them open. When nothing you can do produces beautiful music, make a new tongue, then a new reed body and tongue. Failing that, visit a pipemaker!
i remember hearing in my travels that putting cane toungues onto a drone body (such as brass, ezedrone, etc) does not work very well.
then again, i’ve read posts here where people have done exactly this because they prefer the tonality of cane over plastic…
Permit me to mess with your mind: one possiblilty is that the drone reeds are fine, but that the chanter reed has weakend with the change of seasons. Open up the chanter reed a bit, make it harder to blow, perhaps that will solve the problems.
If it really is a drone reed problem my guess is that the reeds are too strong. Shortening the tongue length by moving the bridle, or removing any blobs of wax might improve matters. Or (gasp) scraping a bit at the reed tongue. The last suggestion, not being reversible, is a last resort.
Work on only one reed at a time. Try only one thing at a time. Make only minor changes. If a reed was good, then goes bad, usually only a teeny adjustment is necessary to restore. Unless, of course, the reed really has gone bad. Then it’s time for a new tongue or new reed, as may be.
are your bellows and bag staunch?drones should really play evenly and smoothly at varying pressures if everything is set up well so it sounds like dodgy reeds to me.i would advise you to change to a set of traditional cane bodied reeds that have been balanced properly and this will probably sort you out.
all the best,
allan moller
I lived in an apt here in maine that was very dry , and the way I solved the drone problem coming from dryness was to put bees wax along the middle part of the tounge . I am guessing , but they seemed to be shifting more side to side and that seemed to solve it .
I also went ahead and put some almond oil on the drone , though I did that for a seperate drone entirely , and had them as another set of drone reeds that I could use as an experiment to see if it worked .
A small amout of oil on the reeds will go along way and will seep into the reeds over time .
tok .
Thanks for all the great tips. The drones were working fine until the weather went all wonky. I’ll continue playing with the reed weight and see if I can get them dialed in before I resort to ordering a set of composites for the winter.
Give me a call if you’d like to come over to the shop and tinker with some drone reeds and see if we can’t remedy your ailing cows. With proper planning I can set aside some time. We’re busy lately as we’re now providing foster care for two young chinese girls. (p.s. if anyone wants to send prayers our way, we’d be grateful!)
