Anyone tried one of these on pipes?
http://tjbassoon.com/little-jake/
Seems like a good idea for pub/noisy stage gigs where feedback is an issue. Is there some obvious technical reason like changing volume, acoustic properties of the chanter top why this is not a good idea?
Hugh
It seems very clever, BUT:
I tryed a few years ago this Spillane thing (among others), of putting microphones direcly on the reed.
What appear is that, as soon as you take the signal from inside the chanter, Every time you close completly the chanter holes, there is a remaining sound during the time the air need to balance pressure between both sides of the reed.
Then, whatever system you use, if the microphone is placed back the inner side of the holes, you can not play staccato any more, because these little noises are very audible.
As usual, the U.pipes does’nt like to do as everybody does. 
Don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not willing to cut a hole in the goose neck or bore and thread a hole in the chanter top of any of my chanters just to find out! 
Thanks to both Benoit and An Draighean for taking the trouble to reply.
An Draighean: hence my question! I am not willing to try it either if there is a good reason not to-it’s the scientist in me.
Benoit has provided that good reason because I am a rather tight piper. Thanks to Benoit for saving me from an experiment that wouldn’t have worked.
Thanks to both for taking the trouble to reply. The question stemmed from the VPipes discussion, where I have been pleasantly surprised how good it sounds amplified, at least for non-specialist and inebriated audiences…I was hoping that there was a good solution out there for the real thing in situations with loud stage volume and high feedback..
Hugh
I tried using a barcus berry flute pickup
as the plug in a chanter top. Its a small
condenser mic in a flute cork. Sounded
fine if you didn’t mind a wind storm effect
from the air rushing by. Maybe a foam
wind screen could’ve worked but I didn’t bother.
I wonder if Spillane used the sax pickup that
they made. Sticking a little piezo on a reed
with some putty doesn’t sound like a great idea
to me.
And don’t you notice this squeaking trouble when staccato playing ?
When I checked that, every closed effects become really impossible.
Long time back I bought a Spillane chanter with the mic built in. Sounded like a bee in a jam jar, clearly I didn’t have the processing, chanter, reed, skill, fairy dust that Spillane had.
This discussion by Evertjan 't Hart covers a variety of mics, and gives a good description of the sound with the pickup on the reed:
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=uilleann;r5vOfg;19980213124413%2B0100