I play an old Taylor style set from the early 1900s. Like a lot of these old sets, the regulators are loud, especially when played against the chanter which is a narrower bore than modern concert pitch chanters. I was at the South Wales Tionol this weekend where I was in a conversation with a couple of other pipers about making regs more quiet, so I tried it this afternoon when I got home.
Essentially what I have done is to cut pieces of black electrician’s tape to the same size as the blades of each reg reed, and put one piece on each side of each reed. This has had the desired effect of significantly mellowing the tone of the regs. It flattened the regs slightly overall, but this was an easy adjustment to compensate for and bring them back into tune.
Has anyone else experimented with ways of achieving this effect? The one I have tried was simply the quickest and easiest available to me this afternoon, but may not be the best option.
It was said Ronan Browne used the sort of tape you use on handlebars of a bike. I asked him about it once, he said he didn’t do that anymore. Various types of tape, balls of bluetack, people have tried all sorts of things. Taylor regs however, as someone said to me recently, 'you either play them or you don’t, there’s no in between’ . They have that unavoidable traffic jam sound about them.
It was actually Ronan’s regs we were talking about. Mick O’Brien and Gay McKeon were talking about how he used various things to achieve that effect.
The Taylor style regs are a bit loud, and I find people love them or hate them. I’ve had a number of pipers say they like the sound of my full set on the go as it has an ‘older’ sound. Although like anything I guess one can see that as positive or negative, depending on your taste
The tape has made a definite difference in mellowing the volume. A bit of an experiment for now so I’ll see how it goes.
As the former owner of the carbon copy of your pipes I wish I could help you out more but when I owned that old set I just plowed ahead. One thing I notice is pipers like Jim Lavin or Bill Ochs who have Taylor or After Taylor sets stick to the one regulator note a lot…so there’s that. But even with the Rowsome-ish pipes I have now I find that a lot more desirable, when playing a long “chord” or note I guess you’d call it.
I thought Ronan was still slapping on the blobs of blu-tack? I’ve never found that very effective, and would shy away from applying tape to reed blades, the sticky grunk could work its way into the reed. Certainly when I take electrical tape off chanters I often have to do more than a bit of clean up, although it’s occurred to me maybe I should buy better electrical tape…but then I’ve just switched to good old beeswax for flattening notes.
Now, how about plumber’s tape, which is non-adhesive? Maybe make a little sandwich of PFTE and beeswax. Or just use a ton of the PFTE.
I don’t know regs (yet) but I know my tapes: you should definitely remove the electrical tape while you still can, since over time it will come off less cleanly. Electrical tape is very gummy – that’s good in the context of electrical wiring since it basically never dries out – the glue will for sure work its way between the blades eventually, with unpredictable results.
So I agree, PTFE is the way to go here.
Wouldn’t reeds with narrower blades be quieter/mellower? Obviously it’s much more work to make new reeds than to tape the ones you’ve got, but ultimately that might be a more elegant solution.
Softer cane might help, too. I flatten the pitch of reg reeds by putting paperclips folded in half in the staple and that cuts into the loudness as well.
Speaking of electrical tape, I was given a few rolls a couple of years ago and recently used one of these to tape a few tone holes.
The stuff was made by 3M and each came in a small “yella” box.
Unlike the common variety that you’d find in any hardware store, this tape was not at all gummy. I am under the impression that it was purchased in an art supply store and I was given a few different colors (none black) - so its raison d’etre might not be strictly utilitarian.
This tape was “perfectly” tacky, though the rolls are now several years old - maybe purchased before the year 2000. It left no residue nor was there any chemical reaction with the wood that I could detect.
I don’t know if it is still made, but if so, you might want to try a roll.
I would tend to agree with what most people have said about reeds: this certainly has worked for my set anyway. Having said that, I think ALL regs have the capability to sound like a traffic jam, I don’t think it’s simply just a Taylor style reg problem (not referring to flat pipes of course).
Yeah, they are slightly bigger bored, but I think, like everything, it’s 90% down to the reed. Having said that, if you play a Taylor style set, and your chanter reed is set to blow quite lightly, then I think it’s normal the regs will outweigh the chanter. Perhaps this is only a personal thing, but I’ve found that generally playing with a livelier/stronger reed in the chanter, balances out everything nicely.
I forgot to mention that my set is boxwood. Actually that might be a factor in mellowing out the honkyness of my regs! I hadn’t thought of that before.
A Blackwood / ebony Taylor style set, with punchy reeds, paired with a mellow/delicate chanter reed could be, indeed a “car crash” honcathon!
The toneholes on Taylor regs are big, noticeably larger than those Rowsome used. Taylors designed them to be powerful, more so than other pipemakers. They also sprung the keys quite strong, giving a very sharp attack to the sound. If you want to set them up to play like Rowsome pipes where you can drone a chord over the chanter and the chanter can still be heard you need to compensate for this. Some have suceeded to various degrees, Clancy and O’Riabhaigh mellowed out their sets a fair bit, presumably with sharp reeds and huge rushes. Others like Joe Shannon made the car horn part of the sound.
As you say you can put an armbuster reed in the chanter too but who wants to play something like that?
Couldn’t agree more. Except the low D/G classic held chord, and of course the low D and bass G together, that’s pretty much what I do. I find the higher up G and D chords on tenor and baritone the ultimate culprits for honkyness.
I really like the bite and attack of the larger tone holes. Having said that, for my taste, I need to merge that with mellowing the reed by whatever means.
Could be interesting to hear some samples of folks pipes with regard to this discussion. I’ll try and stick a video up of mine…
Another very affective way to attenuate volume is to use narrow strips of foam on the tuning pin, instead of blobs of putty. It’s a slow process to get it all set up (adhesive, etc), but the difference in volume is significant, while still being able to tune.
(YES Party time! Why? Because these wee victories are worth partying over!)
Just a quick thanks to those who suggested using plumbers’ tape for this task, rather than the electrical tape I had been using. I have just switched to the plumbers’ tape around the reg reeds, and the effect is much improved. Very much what I had been hoping to achieve, with the volume of the regs noticeably reduced, and playing in much better balance with the chanter.
