I’ve been reading through the extensive post on this from before and it seems to me that there was no conclusion made by anyone. Is it up to taste whether you prefer narrow or wide bored concert D chanter? and Does it really make much difference whether you are the loudest person in the session as long as you are having fun?
I would be keen to try both narrow and wide bore chanters in D before i bought and both would certainly be a luxury.
Alain Froment does both i see any comments on them?
[ This Message was edited by: thorpe on 2002-12-30 16:12 ]
I’d like to keep you in suspense over the details if I may, but I’ve been looking for a narrow bore D for more than two years now. I almost had Brad Angus make one for me and switched gears when a used Gallagher C chanter came available.
I ordered a custom narrow bore D chanter when a used narrow bore D halfset came up for sale… so I bought that too!
I was hoping to break the news with pictures and review, then go into hiding while I immerse myself in pipes for a while.
Thorpe,
My pipes arrived this morning. A 14 year old narrow bore D halfset. The chanter played exceptionally well right out of the box. It was in tune and behaved thru both octaves easily hitting high D. Volume was less than my wide bore D’s but not by much (I will probably buy a sound pressure meter just to give a point of reference) Back D was clear and bottom D though not strong was more than acceptable.
My most significant observation was… for lack of a better term, improved velocity. In that, cuts were crisp and there wasn’t the slightest bit of ‘foghorn’ (Peter knows what this means… it’s his word) I haven’t experienced this with my C or B chanters.
I was very pleased the chanter played at all, as these pipes came from Australia where it’s summertime and hot and dry and they were recently re-reeded. I’m in Miami where today was cool but humidity over 60%. When trying to play again a few hours later, the volume had dropped and so did the performance. I tweaked this reed for a while but it continued to change over the course of the day. Hopefully, it will stablilze quickly and I’ll come back to it later.
Tony’s observations mirror my own. I switched a couple of years ago from a standard concert chanter to a Rogge narrow one. The volume is perhaps slightly more subdued, but in general the chanter seems a lot more agile than the standard concert chanter. No clunks or chunks between octaves, very smooth.
I actually hated Rogge’s reed and sent the thing to Seth Gallagher for a new reed. His reed is wonderful.
Speaking of narrow bore D chanters, I ‘sort of’ have one on order from Lynch. The last I heard from him, though he was not comfortable with the design and was thinking about bagging it, and was suggesting I go with the regular bore chanter instead…but I’m hoping that he can tweak that design to get that narrow bore stable!!!
Anyone know if Kirk has worked out the kinks in the narrow bore D design?
I talked to Kirk about 3 weeks ago about narrow bore chanters and he said he wasn’t going to make anymore - just couldn’t get them to sound as good a concert chanter - a problem he says exists in all narrow bore chanters (not just his).