‘Improved Coyne design’.
I think the buyer wrote that because of the additional alternate-tuned baritone reg. I doubt Brad would ever make such a boastful, cavalier statement about his own work.
The baritone reg for E minor tunes is an interesting idea, though. Does anyone know of other sets (either new or historical) that have been built with this option?
As far as I know several Taylor sets had either an extra reg for E or possibly an extra note on the middle reg. I am not sure Coyne did anything like it but possibly he did, I tend to forget that sort of detail.
There may be a reason though why it never caught on
Firstly, the set for sale looks very nice.
However, I’m not sure that the E regulator configuration that this seller has on his pipes would be the best. He mentions in his ad that the E key lines up with the G on the tenor reg to give an E minor chord. It would seem to me more efficient to play a B with an E to give a modal E.
Most of the E regs were separate regulators with long keys which lined up with several keys on either the bass or tenor reg. I’ve only seen two where the E note was incorporated into a “standard” regulator: David Power’s Froment set where it’s on the bass reg and a B set by Bruce Childress. The Childress set had the E note on the Bari reg but the key was a long key running along the outside of the Bass reg. The key lined up with the G, A and B notes on the bass reg.
I would suspect that the biggest challenge in incorporating an E note onto the standard set of regs would be tuning.
Taylor had a set with the E note on the baritone and, on the Touhey set, it is a separate regulator note.
Billy McCormick’s Taylor set has the extended tenor reg with an E. The set was originally made for Eddie Joyce of Boston, a pupil of Billy Taylor. Piper Todd Denman was very interested in this feature when he was doing his thesis and search for the set which he believed was in San Francisco and had probably been lost or destroyed.
I don’t know how to quote a previous response, but it seems to me it is catching on, Peter. Tim Britton also makes an optional extra regulator with the same placement of the E. It makes sense where it is, on the bari reg. It is in the correct register and on the correct regulator, between the D and the F#, opposite the tenor G, since the E-G combination could define an E minor or a C Major harmony, depending on your chanter note (B or C, respectively).
Not to mention the hassle of tuning G, A, D, F#…
I have regulator Es in both octaves, all you do is tune it to line up with the A and away you go. Nothing agonizing involved.
Thomas K the German piper wrote a big article about E’s, for the American Pipers’ Review. All sorts of homemade designs.
Taylor’s E keys usually stuck out above the bass regulator’s C key. Dunno if you could play a chord there. Mucking up the keyboard with these things often causes trouble with hitting keys by accident - I’ve had the keys of my double bass reg reshaped a few times, I would sound a low note when trying to play a DF# chord, for instance. Dunno again if Taylors with double basses give this kind of hassle (their keys lined up with the tenor reg). The pic of Brother Gildas with his Egan set shows that the keys are below the standard keyboard, making me think Egan tried to segregate all the low notes for this reason.
Now that I think of it - that Patsy Brown set that I once owned had the E note on the baritone reg.
OK speaking of E’s, tell me what you think of this idea -
Ditch the baritone A key - the note is duplicated on the tenor anyway - and have the E key there instead. That way you could get E with B in either octave and/or C in either octave pretty easily, but leaving the lower end of the keyboard intact and normal. I ran this by a few pipes and most agreed they don’t use the bari A key much.
Of course you lose the A C chord at the top of the regs - but most of the time a C E voicing would fit ok. Wherever you stuck an E you’d compromise something after all.
True it would be a bit awkward to make, but certainly possible. Check out Mr Quinn’s drawings of Taylor’s more complex reg keys om his CDRom- it would seem any key can open any hole with enough thought!!
Or is it just a silly idea?
Probably…
AM
In case anyone is wondering why the bari reg doesn’t already have an E between the D and F#… I believe it comes down to acoustics. It seems that getting one-hole D and E to both sound properly is very difficult due to destructive interferences in the lower part of the bore (since the regulator is a stopped tube). This is why, for instance, you won’t get a useful one-finger E note on the chanter if it’s on the knee (but it works off-the-knee).
This is I think the main reason why bari E regs tend to be have entire additional bores dedicated to them.
Bill
If this were true, then you would have the same problem tuning the “one hole” G on the tenor regulator. And the A on the bass regulator. They are also stopped tubes. As is the chanter on Northumbrian pipes. No problem there, either.
I don’t understand the assumption that the E on the seller’s reg IS out of tune to begin with. As Kevin Reitman points out, he has no problem tuning his TWO “one hole” E’s in either octave.
Instead of jumping to a conclusion that is not supported by anything but speculation, why doesn’t someone just ask the seller before jeopardizing his sale with inflammatory conjecture?
The conjecture (or at any rate, my conjecture) about the tuning of the E is not aimed at this particular set. No one has said that. I commented on the configuration not being optimal as personally, if I had the choice, I’d have the E lined up with the B to give a modal E.
The discussion, as I understand it, is about the pros and cons of E regs in general and whether it’s better to have them on the baritone reg, which is what some pipemakers prefer, or to have a separate regulator with only an E note on it, which is what other makers prefer. This isn’t inflamatory. It’s informative.
As the seller is offering (at no extra cost) a standard Bari reg, I don’t see how the sale can be jeopardised.
Well, the Northumbrian chanter is a different beast altogether, since it’s a cylindrical bore.
The G on the tenor reg can indeed give trouble, but it’s less likely to do so because it has a different acoustic relationship to the overall length of the tenor reg, when compared with E on a baritone. Baritone regs are usually very similar to the chanter as far as bore details - and the destructive interference problem is quite evident where the chanter is concerned.
Bill
Billh is more than qualified to give an educated opinion on the E reg note. Billh is also not inclined toward inflammatory remarks. I think you may have misunderstood the meaning behind his post. So before we start slinging some mud around, let’s take a deep breath and move on.
If Billh ever jumps to a conclusion with nothing but speculation, he’d probably be correct anyway.
not mud slinging
I suppose I should clarify that I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the specific baritone regulator in the set for sale above; my intention was to answer the question “why are so many E regs supplied as separate regulators?” i.e. “why not just add an E key to the bari”?
That’s not to say that it can’t be done; I suspect that it’s not easy to get right, and will admit to some suspicions that the E will in most cases be fussy even in the better examples. (This is based on a combination of regulator experience in general, acoustical theory, and conversations with other pipemakers who’ve tried it.) But Brad may well have worked out a design where it works fine. An imaginative person can of course think of some other ways ot potentially avoiding the pitfalls of destructive interference, but as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Certainly I intend to try a couple of ways of adding the E note to the bari reg one of these days, but I am not expecting it to be clear sailing.
best regards
Bill
PJ and bill, your points are well taken, and I beg your pardon if I seemed to be being inflammatory myself.
I don’t agree with PJ’s proposed placement of an E, though. It would be out of place in the scale. F#, up a key but down a step to E, then up a key producing a jump to A doesn’t make sense to me. And the E-B interval would only be useful if you had a G in the melody, whereas as if there is a G in the melody, as soon as you play an E on the regulator you would be suggesting E minor, and with this E you could also suggest or define C Major if the E is opposite the G key, which you cannot do with an E-B interval. This placement, in my opinion, would be less useful and very awkward.
I think I agree; putting the E key touch on the bari so that it lines up “just between” the G and A on the tenor would be nice in that EG and EA would be within reach (while of course still allowing the traditional DG and DF#). But I can surely see the appeal of EB against the D drone as well… which would be a bit of a stretch.