my pennychanter arrived- advice on low D?

Uilleann Pipes
1

have been playing whistle for a year, never played ups before. my pennychanter (ordered fully assembled) was pretty much playable out of the box. from the little i know about UPs, only a good instrument will do that. was able to get steady F sharp, G,A and B and back D, and F sharp and G in the second octave. practicing those will keep me busy for a while.

low D gurgles, even when i back off on bag pressure. any tricks for that, or will it just improve with practice? i tried the small piece of u shaped plastic in the bell- no real difference. i have one long rush in the chanter.

btw, for those of you who are not familiar, dave included an excellent booklet free of charge, which introduces one to the basics of reed care, intrument assembly, your first notes, posture, etc. i have the npu tutor, and dave’s booklet is an excellent compliment to the video- sort of a pretutor. so far, dealing with dave has been excellent. the wait was longer than i would have liked, but it gave me the chance to actually master 15 tunes on the whistle, so not bad.

meir

2

Seth Gallagher has a guide to reedmaking on his website and there is a trouble shooting chart at the bottom of the page.
http://www.uilleann.com/reeds.html
To cure a gurgle (on my chanter) I need to open the reed lips slightly. Sometimes it’s done by pinching the sides of the bridal a bit, other times it’s moving the bridal up 0.3 - 0.5mm
Carefully mark the location with a pencil so you can visually check the amount of adjustment of the bridal.

3

I’d be very slow to tinker with the bridle, especially for a beginner. It might be a temporary weather-induced thing.

You can also try putting a piece of cork that’s big enough to stay comfortably wedged into the tube attached to the chanter head which plugs into the neck of the bag.

An PluiméirCeolmhar

[ This Message was edited by: Roger O’Keeffe on 2002-12-05 10:45 ]

4

thanks to both of you. i will try the cork idea and moving the bridel up slightly. any manipulation that has the words “squeezing”
or “pinching” scares me, so i will probably avoid that for now.

meir

5

How dry is the room you practise in? Try running a humidifier in there for a bit and you may notice an increase in stability. If you don’t have a humidifier, put the kettle on and play in the kitchen.
Marc

6

Good suggestion. Low relative humidity (less than 50%) is very bad for your bottom d.

7

I have a Daye set that I keep in a case when I am not playing it. I keep a slightly damp sponge in the case in a clean margarine tub with a few holes punched in the lid. This seems to do wonders for the reed when I find that it seems a bit dry and not playing right. You will find that moving the bridle even the slightest amount will effect the intonation on a Daye reed, so be very careful. Once I got mine set right by someone who knew what they were doing, I have left it there ever since, and the only thing else I do is to occasionally
re-dampen the sponge. Hope this helps!
Ailin

8

Can you elaborate on the cork thing? How does that help a gurgling bottom D? Isn’t the cork upstream of the reed?

Jeff
confused (and dazed) in humidity challenged Kansas

9

I know nothing about the physics of the “cork in the neck of the bottle”, but it works in some cases at least. It could be either due to simply restricting the air flow, or creating some sort of reflected wave, but I’m just speculating. Arie de Keyzer did it with a chanter and reed which he made for me, he didn’t know why it should work either, he just knew that it did!

If you view the connecting tube end-on, the piece of cork occupies probably about two-thirds or three-quarters of the section, and is about a quarter of an inch long.

10

thanks for above. i a certainly a victim of the current winter storm in terms of low humitidy. will try the sponge thing.

meir

11

Gurgle on bottom D [or ‘autocran’] usually means the throat is too wide.

You can lining the throat with a bit of paper. A bit of wire or a matchstick in the bottom of the chanter can be an emergency fix. Some pipemakers sell chanters with a matchstick glued in the bottom, how’s that for solving a design problem!

12

thanks to al of you.

i combined peter’s and roger’s suggestion by rolling up a small piece of paper and inserting it in the tube of the windcap, where it connects to the bag. the physics of this escapes me, but i swear it helped at least a little. i have humidified the reed quite a bit when not in use. and i have practiced backing off on my bag pressure. gurgling is much better. DD feels it should not gurgle at all and is making me a new reed.

more novice questions:

it is normal to have to back off pressure on the bag to get an in tune lower octave C natural (compared to the pressure necessary for a lower octave C sharp?

is it normal for the second octave E to be very unsteady, and what can be done to help this?

merry christmas to all


meir

13

On 2002-12-25 15:35, meir wrote:
thanks to al of you.

i combined peter’s and roger’s suggestion by rolling up a small piece of paper and inserting it in the tube of the windcap, where it connects to the bag. the physics of this escapes me, but i swear it helped at least a little. meir

I actually meant the throat of the chanter, just below the reed, not the windcap

14

Hi Meir-
I’ve got 2 pennychanters. I do a variant on the sponge trick-I keep 2 sndwich bags with moist paper towels in them in my case and close to the chanter.
I had that same gurgle problem with my second chanter (which came through the mail) that you describe. I was able to get it to work semi OK, but only after much doctoring (Dave sent me another reed).
Chalk it up to humidity (or lack thereof).

15

I fixed the low D buzz in my chanter by stealing an idea out of dds penny chanter.

I found a piece of brass tubing that fit perfectly in the throat of the chanter, cut off a piece about 1 1/4" long, cleaned the inside of both ends out with a rat tail file, flared one end w/needle-nose pliers(to crate friction in the bore) and dropped it into the throat from the bell end.

It lodged in the perfect place with a little coaxing and guess what? A ROCK SOLID bottom D. I also added a short wire below that. Before, the low D fluttered like a sail with no battons. From bad to excellent within 15 minutes.

16

Lorenzo,
Who made your chanter??

17

well, now i know what a throat is:)
wonder why the paper helped in the windcap connection then? i will try the paper in the right place and it may help even more while i wait for my new reed.

last few questions still stand:

what can i do to get a stronger second octave E?

is it supposed to take extra bag pressure to keep the first octave c sharp sharp enough?

is it normal to have to back off on bag pressure to get the first octave c natural flat enough?

or does this mean that i have the reed too far out? (i had to pull it out a fair amoung to flatten back d to the point where it is in tune)?

thanks

meir

18

Tony…it was originally a small bore by McFadden, c.1920-30s, Belfast, but in about 1983 I had Quinn standardize it to his idea of a large bore, so I could play with my band and be heard. I really shouldn’t have done that. Quinn wouldn’t let me do that today, but I was young and didn’t know the virtues of small bores.

As you may know from reading the UPList, there’s been some consensus, and common sympathy among Quinn-Rowesome owners, about the TOO large bore (esp, the throat) Quinn was making at that time, trying to copy Rowsome’s large bores. I talked to him about that this last spring and he says “everything is different now” in his chanter designs.

Tok made a reed for it (blind) that was perfect except for the low D. Now, getting the stars all lined up right, it’s rock solid and very Keenanesque sounding, not a thin-wall chanter (has fairly thick wood).

I now know that all of these things have to be right to have a perfectly playing chanter, in tune, and playing easy, and reaching the notes and octaves when I need them on fast moving reels. If one of these is not right, you can’t properly critique the reed or chanter

  1. Humidity has to be least 50-60%-my reed scrape
  2. Upper bore has to be a certain small bore
  3. Reed should be made by a pro
  4. Staple has to be rolled
  5. Temperature has to be about 72 deg. F.
  6. Reed has to be played for 60+ min. before honest evaluation.
  7. Bell note must be tuned down by inserting a 1/2" O.D. clear flexible plastic tube 1/4" long (from my juicer drain) to narrow down the bottom opening.
  8. Fingers must be moist to seal holes properly

Remember, I’m in a dry climate. Everything is unstable including air cond. central heat (windy drying effect), rain, fog, wind, etc.

I can tell you that the throat is now the O.D. of regular size brass staple tubing..as I simply used the next size up to rush the throat. Someone had put paper in the throat before I got my chanter back this summer. Paper rush choked the sound. No notes would sound properly and clear, upper G or above. I’m thinking certain plastic drinking straws might also be effective for some chanter’s throats, if they friction-fit and don’t fall out. But one must know the difference, or what he is looking for, before knowing what to do to the throat, or reed.

I am convinced that you can create about any sound you want out of a reasonably made chanter. You can get extremely different sounds by simply interfering with the internal impedance (note-to-air space) of the bore, and hole openings, let alone reeds. The wire in the throat softens the whole sound of the chanter, same with the plastic tube inserted in the bell. These things also can change the tuning of cetain notes (fingerhole size adjustments-I removed just about all the previous putty/tape). Bridle adjustment can change my upper F# tuning, even the slightest movement, and the A note.

I sometimes think UP players should live in that Biosphere bubble in Arizona. where everything was constant year around.