Non obvious drone reed performance factors?

Uilleann Pipes
1

Hi!

I am playing a Rogge Bb Set and have to make new tongues for the composite reeds of the baritone and bass drone (Blackwood bodies, for the bass’s role drone I have also have second a plastic one).

I make the tongues from plastic sheets, that should be the same material as Andreas tongues.I believe he sands them down a wee bit.

Over the last weeks or months I have made A LOT of try and error sessions with blue tag, shapes of tongues, sanding them..bridles up and down …etc… :sweat_smile: I used upreeds.com a lot as a source.

During this time I noticed that sometimes a Reed / tongue can seem to use very little air and not shut close when I give more pressure, for example by jumping octaves or pressing the regs.

These rare, magical states where usually gone at the next day, or after I was playing around with the reed too much for further optimisation trials.

Then I have configurations where it feels like they use a lot of air - but still they shut close fairly easily!

Overall I also got the impression that the bad air hungry reeds are not much louder than the easy to play reeds.

Can you give me some directions what factors make a tongue / drone Reed behave so bad (using a lot of air but still shit down too easy..).

That really drives me crazy. at least I was able to get a feel what to do when they change pitch too easily.

I just want to have drone reeds again that work without a lot of air and don’t shut down easily (and don’t change pitch!).

And yes, meeting the pipe maker at some point is an option but I really want to be able to do it myself :grin:

Thank you all for your help!

2

Sometimes, making sure that the reed tongue is not sitting flat on the body may help. Maybe experiment with a tiny bit of curvature in the tongue or a little bit of an angle where it joins the bridle. And of course, Andreas is still around and in business, so maybe send him an email? He may be willing to send you a replacement tongue for free or at least sell you one. Don’t forget also that plastic is not the only thing you can use for tongues. Materials such as carbon fiber, cane or elder have been used with great success.