For any and all newer pipers out there take heart! While there will always be others who are older and wiser (and always gonna be able to cut, cran and triplet you under the table) it isn’t impossible to understand your pipes or your reed, and to make some fairly insightful observations about why they are or more importantly are not doing that perhaps you would hope they would.
I just got off the phone with Mr. Benedict Koehler and after about 45 minutes, he confirmed many of my own conclusions and suspicions about the make of my set and it’s reed(s). Strengths and weaknesses were discussed at length as were options for fixing the problems I am experiencing. For myself, it has now firmly been decided to simply buy a new set and forget about the troubles I’ve had with my first.
It’s a great world we live in that this caliber of help is available at the end of a phone, or as simple as a few emails (in some cases anyway!;))
Brian, good for you. Hope you do better on your next purchase. The trouble you will next have to face when you get your new set and want to sell your current set is, how can you possibly face another newbie when you sell them what you know to be an inferior set? I spent several hundred bucks to get my previous set fixed up to the point where I would not be ashamed to sell it (a Robbie Hughes half-set). The end result was that I was well in the hole by the time I sold it.
I don’t think I would ever sell my PC set for the exact reasons you’ve already mentioned. It’s one of those “If I knew then what I know now” situations. Certainly not the kind of treatment I would ever wish to inflict on another aspiring piper.
Perhaps we’ll use it in our piper’s gatherings as a loaner set or some such thing, more for fingering practice than anything else. Maybe we’ll use it for target practice? Or perhaps nail it to the wall at the local pub for a musical decoration!
