I’ve seen a few all-metal chanter tops (mostly Rowsome) which have ivory “rings” around them. Paddy Moloney had such rings on his Rowsome chanter in the 1960s and 1970, but by the early 1980s (notably the Chieftain’s tour of China) the rings were gone. I’m curious about how stable these rings are. Is the ivory prone to cracking? Like with wooden flutes which sometimes develop cracks at the tuning slide, does ivory expand/contract?
Right, if you trace photos of Paddy with that chanter over the years you’ll notice that it originally had two ivory rings.
Then you’ll see photos where there’s only the lower ring. The top one must have broken off.
Lastly with no rings. We can see that there was really nothing under the rings, they were just slid on over the metal tube and possibly glued in place.
Which answers your question about their durability- the chanter must have taken its share of knocks over the years. You can tell that chanter-cap because of the distinctive top mount, possibly Catalin, which has continued to darken over the years.
The ivory ring at the bottom of his chanter disappears too at some point.
Here’s when he only had the bottom chanter-cap ring.
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Ivory can shrink when it dries out and it is best not to mount rings onto metal tubes like this. More often seen on the Bass regulator reed cap and on the short metal tubes on the lower ends and drones. However, having seen the inside of Paddy Maloney’s pipe case, full of everything that perhaps should not have been crammed in with his Pipes , I am not surprised these rings did not survive all the travelling.
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I also wonder if he encountered any difficulties with cross-border traffic due to the ivory.
Offtopic, but considering in the several times I saw The Chieftains play, over a 30-year period, Paddy never once turned on the drones nor touched the regulators, it would have been far easier for him to have done all that travelling without the Main Stock and its appendages, and using a smaller case.
yes, there had been much speculation, but he played drones and regs on “The Wild Dog Rose”.
I was told by a reliable source that Paddy’s pipes were stolen in Montreal in 1996, when he left them unattended for a few minutes in a restaurant. They were recovered within a few weeks and restored to him.
Thinking of it, I’ve seen Paddy playing only the chanter, him pumping like mad, the way you pump when you have the drones going and are playing a chord on the regs in addition to the chanter.
Given how much his set was leaking I don’t know if there could be enough air to support drones and regs.
The Wild Dog Rose? A studio recording, or onstage live?
I ask because in studio there have been times when the recording engineers have wanted chanter, drones, and regs laid down on separate tracks (giving them complete control).
The Wild Dog Rose is an album from 2011, released by Claddagh Records, of music (pipes and whistle) and poetry by Paddy Moloney and poet John Montague, along the lines of the Poet and the Piper (Seamus Heaney and LOF). It’s available on Apple Music.
I won’t speculate on whether the engineers recorded the drones/regs separately.
I’m not sure about regs, but there’s a recording of Paddy Maloney live in 1999, where he’s definitely playing drones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olgRG4-PBn0
There are many recordings of Paddy using his drones. And probably as many threads asking whether he ever plays his regs 
. There was one clip posted on YT of Paddy playing drones and regs, but the sound and video were not in sync, so the debate continued.
For what it’s worth, as a student of Rowsome, I don’t know how he would NOT have mastered the regulators, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 
I recall a Chieftain’s concert in Melbourne, probably in the second half of the 1980’s , where Paddy was playing drones and regulators for a change. Evidently the set he was playing that day had recently come to him in good condition.
Fast forward into the 1990’s Paddy visited me to get a crack in the mainstock repaired, once staunch the set was reasonably playable.
Wow how odd with the first tune on that 1999 concert. Sounds like just the Bass drone is going, and Paddy’s giving looks.
Paddy seemed to have at least 2 Rowsome sets, judging from old photos, but he favored the same chanter and would switch out the bodies of the sets.
Anther piper who was close enough to PM told me ‘Paddy has a room full of pipes’.
There’s also a photo of him holding a big flat set. I would have loved to hear him play it.
Probably Dan Dowd’s set, which he often borrowed and used on the early Chieftains recordings.
looks like the photo is reversed. Dan OD played an Egan set. This one looks more like a Coyne, but I’m no expert.
Yes, that’s not Dan’s. The man who made the ‘room full of pipes’ (see above) did specifically mention Coyne(s) in conversation.
I saw an interview with Paddy which seemed to have been recorded in his house. At one point, he opens a case or box which contains an old set of pipes. Paddy comments that they’re a sweet sounding set, or something to that effect, before (frustratingly!!) closing the case and passing on to something else.