The iconic photo of Patsy Brown shows him playing a double chanter with the Boehm style key system he used later in his pipe making career. Does anyone know whether that chanter still exists, or its where abouts?
Rick
He made a few of those chanters. He just hung sprung metal keypads over tone holes which he did for elderly pipers who had difficulty sealing the chanter with their hands.
He put metal keypads over the holes but they were still in the usual place so it wasn’t really a Boehm system. It just looked like one.
Interesting though.
One was sold on ebay recently.
Tommy
Thanks Tommy.
Yes Mr Brown made several single bore chanters with Boehm style key systems. A few of these are still about, including at least one owned by a Chiff member, of which he posted this photo on an earlier thread.
I’m specifically interested in Mr Brown’s double chanter, and whether its whereabouts is known. Judging from the photo, the Boehm-style keyword on the double chanter is quite different system than that he applied to his single bore chanters.
Was it a double chanter you saw sold on ebay or a single?
Cheers
Nothing to add I am afraid but couldn’t help thinking of a key heavy photo I came across recently:
Is that Joe Doyle with the double bass? I know he played a Taylor type set, I want to say a Johnny Bourke, with a double.
Patsy Brown also likely put the flute keys on an ivory Taylor chanter, I got to hear that in person when I was starting out. The owner had a couple of long pipe cleaners in the bore to shut it up, he preferred wood, the ivory gave things a harder sound, which figures. Wally Charm wrote an article on that chanter for the US Pipers’ Club review.
They used to put keys over all the holes on simple system flutes, I’ve a French piccolo by Noublet that’s keyed up like that. You play it just like any other simple system flute, and can fool the audience into thinking you’re playing a Boehm instrument, maybe. You laugh, but they used to build button accordions with a fake piano keyboard on the inside, to make it look to onlookers that you were playing the newfangled fashionable piano key layout. Companies persisted in building these on special order into the 1960s…appearances matter in show business.
Of course another advantage of these keyed up simple system flutes is that you can make the toneholes as large as on a Boehm flute, gaining the advantages those have in equal tone and overall power with all of the holes. Paddy Taylor was a well known flute player from Limerick who lived in London later in life and made an LP on the Claddagh label, “The Boy in the Gap,” he played one of these jobs. Perhaps you know one of the Paddy Taylor reels or jigs.
I always wondered which woodwind key Patsy Brown cannabilized to use on Irish pipe chanters. I seriously doubt he built the the things himself. I wonder if he beefed up the toneholes on some of those chanters like the flutemakers did. Seems possible but pointless, I think we can build noisy enough chanters as is.
Photos of a Patsy Brown chanter here http://pipers.ie/source/gallery/?galleryId=119 - tone holes look to be normal size. Flute keys on open front holes and normal Taylor style on rear.
Have been informed that Patsy suffered from arthritis and could not close the tone holes properly hence the switch to using flute keys
I own a double chanter brought in the mid 80’s from Sotheby’s auction house in Taylor style maker unknown - suggestions have included Hennelly - it is not Brown however suspect it is by the famous maker “Anon” 14 3/4" overall length with 4 keys on rear but slightly different layout to Taylor with Bb and G# keys operated by thumb and blocks in place for 3rd octave e and f# keys? Basic sprung Pop Valve.
Thanks for the link but thumbnails only.
The tyranny of membership strikes again
Membership doesn’t come into it as even logged in as a full member all I can get is the thumbnails - old NPU website worked well but the new one leaves a lot to be desired if even members cannot access things.
Works perfectly fine for me, once I log in.
But (I tried) can’t link the image to the forum. Although when -right click ‘image’ (below) >view image I do get the full image again (because I am still logged in I suppose).
With NPU there are members, and Members, and Members. I paid for a basic website membership - 20 Euro - expecting to be able watch all of the videos, if nothing else. Well, can’t watch a lot of them. They have these other two tiers where you can watch more, and a full member (50 sheckels) can watch/view everything, gets the journal, NPU strip-a-gram for their birthday, et frickin’ al. 
As you can see am logged in and it still does not want me to see the content to which I am entitled as a FULL member - however the cure is to log out and then log in again once or twice. A bit of bad code somewhere - have informed NPU
Here’s a photo of Patsy from Pat Sky’s old uilleann pipes tutor. This was the first I heard of him, and was impressed by that set.
There’s another photo from the same 1954 Boston Globe article online, too:
Taken from this page. You can see clearly how this chanter’s front keys were mounted differently than the one shown earlier in this thread.
This idea of mounting keywork to cover what were previously open holes has precedents in flutemaking - and no doubt other instruments I’m just not familiar with, oboe/bassoon/clarinet apply this in some fashion. Flutemakers used to cater to players of the “Old System” open holed flute who refused to learn the new fingering that came with modern Boehm etc instruments. So they built flutes with keywork that covered the previously open holes, which could also be placed in their acoustically correct places and made much larger, too. Here is a 1906 Boosey and Co. example:
Described at Rick Wilson’s oldflutes site.
There’s a full Brown set shown at Nick Whitmer’s Lives of the Pipers site, too, which matches the one Patsy is shown with here. These look like nice work; I have what I was told is a chanter from his hands and it’s a great stick. PB was, like Pat Ward, a double chanter player; a news article from the Irish Advocate Nick links to has this bit of doggerel from an admirer:
There’s a foursome of hearties that gather together
To talk and make music whenever they may.
You’ll see them assemble in all kinds of weather
And hear them applying, and here’s what they play.
There’s Murphy, the piper, from old County Kerry,
Carey and Foley, both men of renown,
Tom Ryan, the fiddler, whose smile ‘tis so merry,
And last but not least Double-Chanter Brown.
“The Double Chanter Jig”
(Dedicated to Patsy Brown, January 22, 1941).