Hi guys,
just a quick note to let you know that I’m selling on Ebay.it my practice set of uilleann pipes made by Geoff Wooff:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Geoff-Wooff-uilleann-pipes-practice-set-in-B-/251083120988
A bit pricey. We’ll see if someone goes for it. Worth a shot.
Hear hear, Ted.
how much would the same chanter be from the maker?
I rang Geoff way back in -95, then he wanted €600-ish but today, provided he would make you one i have no clue. 
I sent an email to Geoff Wooff last May 2011 and this is his reply.
my price for a chanter “THIS YEAR” is 2000 Euros. This includes four keys and stopkey head, any pitch, left or right handed. In Ebony with Brass or Nickel silver fittings.
This price is for chanters that leave here this year.
The waiting time is a much more difficult question;
I have still close to 100 people awaiting sets, mostly full sets.
There are people waiting for chanters but finding the time to fit these in between the full set making..??So, I would suggest it will be several years before I could find the space to make such a chanter and I would then need to give you a new price quote.
Cheers
Ferg
Thank you Ferg…
sometimes i wonder whether too much of a maker’s time is spent on full sets when often the customer will almost only ever play it’s chanter and drones, and maybe it would be better to make an abundance of great chanters and just the odd full set for a select few
Arguably the pipes are more than the sum of their components. A great pipemaker like Geoff creates a set of different components set up in a way to work together to create a potential for a variety of sounds. The colours of the chanter and how they can be blended with the harmonics of the drones and complemented by the regulators. And personally I think that the way he brings together all elements of the sound of a full set is one of his great his strengths and something that really sets him apart from other makers. All the things that would be lost when just concentrating on lone chanters.
You don’t need a chanter like this to learn on. You do need the whole lot to bring out the best out of all the various bits that make up a full set of pipes.
That said, Geoff told me yesterday the chanter for sale was a ‘very, very good chanter’ that he hated to send off at the time.
Thank you Mr. Gumby…
First bid on Ebay… Remember that the sale expires tomorrow…
Hi guys,
the Geoff Wooff set for sale on Ebay has just been sold.
Well done. I hope it has gone to a good home.
This certainly resets the bar for practice sets!!
So if, according to the other thread, Geoff only produced 4 sets a year, and here he states he had about 100 orders, mostly full sets, waiting, that wuould suggest he has a waiting time of 25 years!! Oy Vey!!
Actually from 2004 to present Geoff has made 17 sets, thats around two a year, so his waiting time is now fifty years.Long live Geoff Wooff.
RORY
Then the buyer got a bargain.
Fair play.
In July 2008 a Froment CP chanter was advertised for sale for 2500 Euro (it’s still listed on the “Sold Items” page on Uilleann Obsession). The exchange rate that month (according to XE.com) was .634692 Euros to the dollar, which put the price in USD at $3938.91. With shipping (to me) it would be over $4,000. I emailed the seller 3 days after the listing and offered her $3500 and she said “sorry, it’s been sold”. At that time, the maker was still living, so the price wasn’t inflated by whatever factor that might have added.
At the current exchange rate, the Woof set (in USD) was sold for $4412.00. The Woof practice set does not seem overpriced by comparison with that Froment chanter, which sold very quickly.
Pipes by top makers with long waiting lists can command high prices. There are a lot of people (well, maybe not as many musicians) that make a lot of money and spending $5k on a practice set would have no impact on their financial situation. I spent close to $15k on a Froment 5/4 set 3 years ago (when I had the scratch), which today would be impossible for me.
A local Uilleann piper to my area is a professional studio and concert bassoon player. A great bassoon (and not even the hand crafted high end of the species) runs about $38,000. What do other “hobbies” cost…boats, jet skis, vintage cars, golf equipment? The good stuff is priced high for high quality.
Was the price of the Woof set high? Certainly. Was it worth it? Without doubt.
It aint necessarily so,and a bit of a gamble really. What if you find that after a while that the chanter doesn’t suit you or you style of playing,just because the chanter is made by Geoff is no guarantee, and seeing he was the only bidder if he was to sell he might not get back what he paid.
RORY
It’s the same if you order directly to the maker… Usually you can’t try an instrument before the purchase, and in a sense a used istrument (in this case, along 20 years) is a tested instrument.
I think I got a bargain! The b set arrived yesterday and the chanter is superb. I already have a Full set of Wooff pipes in D with both a narrow bore, mk2 chanter and an old wide bore D chanter, but the set was missing it’s bellows which had, after lying unused by the previous owner, decomposed over time. So now I have a practice bag for all the chanters, a set of wooff bellows, which currently cost €1000 and a cracking B chanter which would currently cost €2000 if I was top of his list. (which I’m not , I’m actually about no 99 in his list for a C# set).
Reading the other thread on wooff pipes, my c# set, should be ready in about 2037 when Geoff is about 90 and I’m 76, and as both of us smoke, that isn’t going to happen!