Anyone know of this maker? It’s hard to make out what the chanter says but I’m pretty sure it says P. Murray, Belfast. Its an old, ivory mounted, set that I’m going to attempt to reed in the next few days. Cheers, Seth
paul murray. had a worshop on the glen road belfast around 1991. learned craft from sean mcaloon. spent a while in dublin in the seventies. also made fiddles and did furniture restoration. as far as i remember he had to give up pipe making due to injury, possibly a serious eye injury.
i have an article from 1991 from local paper - if interested pm an email address an ill forward it
or try this link:
http://db.tt/6cfdwfBK
Thanks much, I really appreciate it. Do you have any idea how much one of his half sets in D’ is worth? Its in great condition and has ivory mounts. Ive found zero information on his pipes on the internet. Seth
sorry, but ive no idea what his pipes might be worth these days. i would guess he didnt get making too many sets as his workshop wasnt open that long. ive never heard any of his sets played an i dont know of anyone who has a set.
i spoke to him briefly years ago (prob 91)but i knew zero about uilleann pipes then.
any chance of a look at them? or a listen? post couple photo,video?
Sure thing, I’ll try and post a few pics as soon as I get a chance. Seth
Hello! A friend of mine has a half set of P MURRAY Uileann pipes. He has offered to sell them to me. I really do want to buy them, but I do not know now. I am not liking what little I am finding on the web about P MURRAY BELFAST. I did take some pictures. They are ivory mounts. Any more info on P MURRAY would be great to!
??
I’m not finding anything at all aside from this thread, and a post in uilleanforum.com offering a set for sale. The info there is pretty neutral, IMO.
Or perhaps I misunderstand you, that you’re not comfortable with there being so little information?
Seth, let us know how you get on with reeding the chanter. If the man absorbed anything from McAloon it would be all to the good. McAloon was known as an accomplished reed-mechanic and had learned from R. L. O’Mealy as a young man. These all stand to the plus side of the ledger.
From a cursory examination, Seth, could you hazard a guess as to how much toward the narrow bore or wide bore the chanter strays?
Bob
Again if Mr Murray worked closely with Sean McAloon he would have made a nice set alright.
Sean, like many other makers, copied Leo Rowsome chanters. I had a Rowsome chanter that was owned by Sean, and Martin Preshaw too.
I’m told that it was the chanter that Sean copied to make his own but I know Sean had a few Rowsome chanters and you never really know what adjustments he may have made from the original.
So you could take a wild guess and maybe say that P Murrays chanters may be some what similar, in bore anyway, to a Rowsome chanter that I had (and copied too)
Reed dimensions for that Rowsome chanter
Slip 110mm x 13.2 to 13.5mm (quite wide)
Staple 52mm long
Tube staples seem to work fine.
But 13 x 52 x 14 works well for a rolled staple.
OAL should be 80 to 82mm
I would be curious to know what style of keys can be found on Murray’s regulator’s. Are they the flat style favored by O’Mealy in his later work, or tear drop in shape like the early O’Mealy sets that followed the Kenna model, or the more familiar flat Rowsome style keys. I ask because the McAloon family still has an O’Mealy set with the flat Tayloresque Reg keys. I would be curious to know how much this may have influenced anything Murray learned from McAloon.
The Rowsome wider bore chanters were attempts to make a louder chanter. O’Mealy called them car horns. McAloon himself played an O’Mealy set he got from Jack O’Rourke. I would be curious to know if there is some blending of the two outlooks. It really is unfortunate we have so little production from Murray’s hand.
Bob
I think most of O’Mealys students used the Rowsome style key work, at least that I know of.
Mind you was Frank McFadden a student of O’Mealy?
I’ve seen 2 McFadden sets. One looked like an Egan copy and the other looks like a Taylor copy. aka ribbon keys.
Tommy
I can’t say that Frank McFadden was a student of R.L. Mealy. What I gleaned from the Sean Reid Society site are two items: McFadden at one time owned a set with a no-name chanter, which he attributed to Mealy, having been made for a parson who could not afford an organ for his church. The other item is a story told by Andy Conroy illustrating Mealy’s tightfisted ways: McFadden went to him to procure a reed. The asking price was five schillings (described as a lot of money at that time). McFadden only had a little over four schillings with him, and went away without the reed. . . 
. . .could this be the birth of another great reed maker?
I think it would have been hard to be around Belfast at that time and not have R.L.'s shadow fall on you at one time or another. While he never broadcast on the Irish National Radio, he was a frequent guest on the Northern Irish BBC station.
Bob