I was reading the posts on the hard bottom D’s in the Eric Rigler topic thing-a-majig, and this led me to a few questions of my own. I love the sound of the hard bottom D and i too think that it is the only true low D on the pipes (in fact often times the soft D is flat). The only problem that I am having with my hard bottom D is that it is so over-whelmingly loud that everytime i play it in a session everyone else jumps and looks for the semi-truck heading their way only to realize that the god-aweful loud-ass noise is coming from my pipes. I already have to keep a paperclip in the end of my chanter to keep the D in tune. I was wondering what i could do to quiet down my hard D a little bit.
Check that your reed isn’t too open at the lips. Sometimes just closing it a bit (a very tiny bit) will help control the volume without affecting the tuning. The hard and soft bottom D should be very close in tuning.
Experiment by putting rushes of different sizes and lengths up the bore. This has a quieting effect. Play it a lot, experimenting with humidity and temperature. Reeds change by themselves after continued playing, resting, playing.
Yeah, if it’s too loud, why not go even louder. You can put an empty pint glass between your legs and play your bottom Ds over the pint glass. If you think your D is loud now, just wait til you hear that.
