I am curious about a set Michael Egan made in the old days for Charles Ferguson, a blind piper who had Egan make the set while he (Egan) lived in Brooklyn, New York. Ferguson went on to tell people that the pipes were presented to him by Queen Victoria; the details of the story are in O’Neill’s Irish Minstrels and Musicians. Here is a link to the picture: http://www.concentric.net/~pdarcy/photos/photo_17.jpg
The picture is from a book by Duncan Fraser, “The Bagpipe.” As the text on the pic’s link mentions, the caption in the book says the set has 27 keys. If you look closely, you will notice the small and middle regulators have an extra key each, I think at the top, i.e., for b/d, or bflat/csharp. Or something. The key at the bottom of the small reg appears quite short, if it were a lower e key I’d think it would be longer, perhaps even with a guide block (like the Kenna set on the cover of the Drones and Chanters Vol. 1)
5 keys on the middle + 6 keys on the small + 4 keys on the bass + 2 keys on the double bass = 17 keys. 10 to go! Drone switch + chanter stop key = 8 chanter keys…4 semitones, high d’‘’, high e’‘’, d# (on the bottom, to give a true d# instead of the lowest fingerholes warbly eflat. Ferguson played airs exclusively, he would have had uses for keys like this). One more key! What the hell?
I think this set is supposed to be in the National Museum of Scotland. Going by memory here. Anybody know its current whereabouts?
Also-the middle drone had a turnaround lower section, which the museum curators have jammed onto the middle reg-youch-and stuck the reg’s endcap into the drone…
Also-the middle drone had a turnaround lower section, which the museum curators have jammed onto the middle reg-youch-and stuck the reg’s endcap into the drone…
That baritone regulator has me puzzled. I think I can see a complete baritone drone between the baritone and bass regs, and it ends even with the cap on the bass reg with only a single ivory ring (enlarge the photo). Is it possible that the middle regulator has a loop for a purpose…like maybe a key we can’t see below the tuning slide? It just doesn’t seem possible that the baritone tuning slide is big enough to be jammed onto the normally much larger baritone regulator.
I think that ring’s just part of the bass drone. Egan made the lower sections as long as he could here, for some reason. As for getting the tuning slide on to the baritone reg, maybe they used a hammer…
Right underneath the “exit” of the piece attached to the baritone reg, underneath the double bass’s lower part, you can also see what looks like a baritone drone exit mount! Maybe it came from another set of pipes…I think it’s just a block of wood or the like, to prop the set up; or maybe they used a mount from another set of pipes…
Intriguing photo…I sure have to use ellipses a lot to describe it… 
I just realized that there’s a tuning pin in the cap on the bar. reg U-bend…now that would take some thinking, to have the wire go around the bend to get back up to the keys! 
So I agree, something’ awry.
Kevin, forgive my ignorance here, but what years are you refering to as
“the old days” for Egan and Charles Ferguson… when did Egan make this
set of pipes? I don’t suppose there are any recordings of Ferguson playing?
No, Ferguson and Egan died before the advent of recording. O’Neill’s book I believe tells when Ferguson went on a tour of the states with an opera soprano, and had the set made with his new found funds; the 1850s, maybe.
This M. Egan set was probably his finest, and probably one of the best sets ever made by anyone. As far as I can tell, all the pipes pictured in the 1904 Duncan Fraser book, including this one, went to the National Museum of Scotland. They are not listed on the H. Cheape Checklist of Bagpipes from Edinburgh University. The good news is they are probably in a very good state of preservation since they have been locked away for almost a hundred years and probably have not been messed with. Bad news, no one has seen them or measured them and they are not pictured or described in any Nat Mus Scot publications. Nor have they been on display as far as I know. No information about them was available from Museum staff when I enquired a few years ago.
(rummage) (rummage)
I’ve got Hugh Cheape’s contact information somewhere around here . . . you know he curates the whole bagpipe collection at the National Museum of Scotland now, right? I’ll try to contact him if you like.
What you say about the pipes being locked away is, as you say, both good and bad. I have an old “landmark” set of highland pipes that Hugh talked about acquiring for the Nat Mus of Scotland; in the end, since I can play them, we agreed they shouldn’t go under glass until I’m to old or sickly to play them. 
Stuart
It sounds like Mark’s spoken with Hugh already, he is listed as curator of the Scottish culture department at the Museum’s website. They mention having a “fully chromatic Uillean pipe” [sic].
Measuring pipes fully is quite an endeavour, a box full of gauges in gradients of 1/4mm is employed by anyone seriously interested in what’s there. Even a chanter would take quite some time, far more than museum personell can be expected to put in.
Has anyone considered a better way of doing this - something involving X-Rays, perhaps. I know Pat Sky X-Rayed his Rowsome pipes to find out what was under the hood; didn’t Baines do the same? And Ken McLeod X-Rayed his C Kenna.
“Don’t worry, we just want to play a few tunes in intensive care…” 
When I was writing the Sean Reid Society article about Irish pipes in museums, I contacted Hugh Cheape and Arnold Meyers at the National Museum of Scotland. They were both supportive but had no other published information to share and little time to compile anything or help. The National Museum of Scotland probably has the best and most extensive collections of European bagpipes anywhere, including Irish pipes. It would be great to at least know what they have, or convince them to publish a list (like Cheape’s EU list)or book of photographs. Cheape’s wonderful book, “The Book of the Bagpipe” has a small sampling of the wonderful collection. If anyone has a contact at the museum and can get information about the collection that would be great. Mark
I’ve been told that, apart from the expense (unless you have a buddy who works in A&E in a part of town where people commonly have bizarre apertures distributed along their tibias), it’s an invasive procedure because you have to give the pipes the equivalent of a barium meal. 
What’s next??
MRI?
I think the next cool thing would be endoscopy. I’ve thought about taking MPEGs of the insides of flutes/chanters/drones/etc. with bronchoscopes, but I’ve never followed through.
Maybe I should. It might be kind of fun to see inside these things.
Actually, CT or MR with a 3D reconstruction would be very cool. You could then take exceedingly accurate measurements of the bore, because you could remove the timber and have just the bore image. Hmm . . .
You’d have to be careful with the MR, though, in case there were any ferrous metals on whatever you were scanning. And metal screws up CT as well, but it’s not quite so dangerous.
Stuart
Frankly, you guys disappoint me. Surely it is obvious that, for a musical instrument, the appropriate investigative tool would be ultrasound.
djm
Pardon my dullness, are you serious? I know you and the rest of the RNs/MDs/PDs/LPNs/OBGYNs are having a laugh right now but…
I once heard about high-end wood flute maker Rod Cameron measuring bores with a…sound gizmo. Don’t ask me for details. Maybe it was a pygmy bat. But it measured the bores of antique flutes very precisely, whatever it was.