This past weekend I went up a new canyon to look for reed material. I was out for elder, and drove past dozens of trees. After I’d gotten out of residential range and barking dogs, I stopped to begin combing through a tree when I spied something very interesting.
Syringa! And here’s some of the suckers I cut…growing long, straight, good distance between nodes, and with nice wall thickness. Everything looks right.
Earlier, I posted that syringa, lilac, snowberry, and some forsythia were too woody. What I haven’t allowed for until now is that suckers are what you want–in these species anyway. (not true for elder or phragmites)
The rest of the afternoon, needless to say, had me fixated on syringa–probably because straight elder is so hard to find–and I drove past dozens and dozens of elder trees, and a whole lot of other reed material as well, looking for this new variety.
I enjoy discovery, and the hunt. All the time you put into collecting would never pay…although, come to think of it, I do wonder about those websites I saw last week with composite reeds at $200 a set!
I doubt he would. For the most part it is only Pipemakers who make Drone Reeds and it is a little job that is done once, if done right, and the reeds will live for a very long time.
I have some customers who have put 20,000 to 30,000 playing hours on their reeds and still going. The old Elder reeds in my own set would have been made more than a hundred years ago and are still singing sweetly.
The box of Drone Cane I purchased from Francisco Medir in 1978, cost $20, and I still have not used it all !
Just to give you an idea…after driving up and down all the canyons in the foothills, and hiking the recreational trails nearby, I still haven’t gotten to more than half the elder trees that are available. Just tonight, I finally finished sorting through all the elder twigs I’ve collected over the last couple or three months (w/o a ladder or w/o climbing trees).
That little pile lined up on the left are #1 - all perfectly straight. That pile in the Tupperware pan are #2 - all curved/arched. That cardboard box behind the lamp has about 300 twigs in it - all throw-aways. They were too large, too crooked, too twisted, too soft, too old, or not of good quality walls. It’s kind of hard to part with the straight ones, and I’d like to be the one who actually makes the reed out of them, but I know better. Someone like Geoff should really have them available in his shop, as an alternative to turn to, when reeding up the few sets of pipes he makes.
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