There has been much said about how to make regulator reeds. I have made wooden ones that have been very good, and very stable (and sound well too). In turn, have also made reeds ( both cane and wood) that have bent upwards or downwards under pressure. I have heard many a yarn about trying to keep reed more open, pin holes being put into the reed itself, and a host of other tricks and tips to get the reed to work correctly.
Recently, Sam Lawrence made a suggestion to me to roll a bit of blue-tac into a sausage like shape, and put it into the stock end hole of the regulator that I am trying to stabilize. I must say that doing this in conjunction with adjusting the end cap helped. (I had never heard of this trick before. Thanks very much, Sam!
I wanted to open up this thread for other read makers and regulator reed tinkerers to offer up their suggestions and thoughts on how to keep regulators in check.
A greater elevation on the eye of reg. reeds can help keep them from jumping the octave.
Kynch, I can’t picture what you mean by putting the blue-tac sausage into WHERE?
Strange…I thought I posted a reply? Hmmm Okay…lets try again.
Take the tac and form a “sausage” shape with it. Remove the stock from the cup, and put the tac inside the intake hole of the problem reg. Create a significant amount of impedance, but don’t go beyond covering up 1/2 of the opening, and mind your tac placement. Do not put the tac into the top of the reg reed! Duh!
This plus adjusting the end cap for pitch helped me.
As I said in the post that didn’t make it up there; Whether you look at this as a fix for something that wasn’t right to begin with, a way to impose your will on a typical well made reg, or just another tool… this seems like a fix well worth noting. I wish I didn’t have to go to this length, but then again I wish for many things!
I hope this helped!
*btw- it’s “Kinch,” "Pádraig, " “Kinch-Pádraig,” I answer to all of 'em!
Joe Kennedy advises taping over the opening and poking a hole through it, on the baritone reg anyway. The tenor has this built-in, at least how he makes his stock. At some point the tubing is reduced to a much smaller diameter, which then goes through the covers at the bag end of the stock. This is for a hollow stock, btw.
I find all this very interesting. I feel that there’s much to know about regulators and few makers really invest the time to sort this out.
I have spoken to some who just do a straight taper and tone holes, while others start with a straight taper and work from there adjusting the bore and the tone holes as they go, and now (it was new info for me at least) the reducing of the intake suggested by Sam (Hunter Pipes) and too, incorporated by Joe Kennedy (as per the last post). I’m wondering who else uses this modality in their design?
Well, it’s a hollow stock, right? So the bag end, there’s two discs, don’t ask me why there’re two - probably structural, that the stop key bar / cork arrangement goes through, to allow air to the drones. The regulator tubes (brass) also go through them (and are fed separately). These are the covers I mean. The bass and tenor tubes (on my B set) and the tenor tube (on my D set) all have a small, from memory less than 0.5cm or so, tube sticking through, and at some point beyond that they expand into the full size tube that the regulator sticks into. The baritone on both is just the full size tube all the way through.
From what I remember and understand, Joe advises putting tape with a hole in the middle over the baritone tube opening (or perhaps if he was feeling extravagant, some sort of smaller disc with a smaller diameter hole in the middle to serve the same purpose) mainly to ensure that the air pressure is consistent for all three regs. I think if he could do a smaller diameter tube for the baritone without making the stock a ton longer and possibly making it impossible to fit a reed in there, he would.
“Well, this is exactly what I do, but not for stability. It’s just a convenient way to do it due to the configuration of my hollow main-stock. My memory is that when I experimented with this concept of restricting airflow to improve stability years ago, I was disappointed with it’s effectiveness and abandoned it. I always made sure, since then, that the access holes are bigger than the staple diameters of the reg reeds thus insuring that the air pressure on the reed is greater than the impedance of the reed so there is no resistance. It stands to reason that any larger access hole than the staple size is gravy.”
Hello folks,
Years go Craig Fischer lead me to experiment with different chanter cap dimensions. I found that depending on the amount of volume and shape of that volume, you can make the reed do some very different things. This is much more noticeable when you mess with regulator/stalk design as opposed to chanter tops.
Anyone interested in the relationship of “cap volume” as it applies to regs should try the following:
Pull one reg partially out of the stalk and test tuning. Do this at about 5mm intervals, but be very careful not to crunch your reed if you reg gets to be too far out of the stalk.
What I often find is that the differences in volume above the regs, affect the tuning much as the cork in the bottom does.
I suspect the poster putty is an analogous move, but believe it or not, the shape of the “cap volume” sometimes alters things as well. I really wish I understood what was going on there.
Just in case the above experiment doesn’t provide enough confusion for you…
As you are moving one reg in and out of the stalk you may find that adding drones and or the other reg notes will then make the reg you are moving play very different notes. In other words different combination will reveal all sorts of craziness. It is a good argument for sticking to tried and true reg/stalk configurations.
