“New Note as of January 29, 2008: PLEASE! PLEASE! Do not allow any other pipemaker, instrument repair technician, or just guy-thinks-he-knows, etc. alter any chanter of my make. Also, do not let any one repair, modify or upgrade one of my sets, regardless of stated qualifications, without my explicit consent. Up until now, I have been nice enough to reverse alterations, and replace hacked chanters at no charge. Because such instances have recently become epidemic, and bad for me economically, this policy will no longer be observed and I will charge full price for such reversals and replacements.
Thank you.”
I can attest that Bruce is a total gentleman and all around super nice guy. He has bent over backwards ..always has…to support his pipes and customers. But even he had his limits.
This note is good advice that everyone should follow. I can attest to this experience.
Good on the man. Where else would you expect to have an instrument replaced or repaired after you or one of your mates has had a hack at it? Everywhere else, altering or modifying a product in any way automatically voids any warranty there may have been. Only in uilleann piping!
“Good on the man. Where else would you expect to have an instrument replaced or repaired after you or one of your mates has had a hack at it? Everywhere else, altering or modifying a product in any way automatically voids any warranty there may have been. Only in uilleann piping!”
Possibly, because pipemakers have done it in the past, their customers expect it. Several pipemakers I know have moved to the position that if they didn’t break it then they shouldn’t be expected to fix it.
Some of the above may explain delays in other customers’ orders.
I was trying to get the regs on my Brennan set reeded, and I asked Bruce if he thought his synthetic reeds might work. I sent him the bari reg and he made a reed for it that sounded very good on all but one note, which was not close. He sent the reed back with the reg for me to mess around with but refused payment of any kind, even though he had spent time and materials working with it. He was just nice enough to see if he could help me out. Great guy.
