What’s going on with some pipemaker’s and their crazy ,plucked out of the air design’s . there are only two design’s of pipe’s that are traditional (it is a traditional instrument) and they are, the broad Rowsome style and the Taylor style. Look at the top group of pipemaker’s and you will see they all use these two design’s .The Rowsome style being the most common. So come on lad’s you have too look back to move forward !!!
RORY
Surely you are taking the piss. It seems to me that the Taylors and later Leo Rowsome were the ones departing from the traditional design exemplified by Coyne, Kenna, Harrington, Egan, etc.
Yes, many of todays pipemakers have carefully studied the older maker’s work and, much like the Taylors and Rowsome did, attempt to improve on the original design. Now many makers are improving on the Rowsome and Taylor pipes. Progress and change go hand in hand.
After making reeds for a multitude of designs (not just Rowsome and Taylor) I can safely say that everything works up to a Point, BUT how does The BORE/REED combination work over time, and WEATHER changes. I believe that the Taylors were working on big bores due to the demands of the large music halls in which pipers performed (late 19th century). No Electronic Sound Re- Inforcement! (I can just imagine what Victorians would have thought of the decibel levels of our times)!
The Rowsomes performed in the same sort of venues (and at OUTDOOR FAIRS etc.) in Ireland. William Rowsome’s Big Bore C sharp sets and then later Leo’s E flats and (A 440) D sets,got the pipes heard over the hubbub. The narrow bores are more stable in my opinion, and in modern times, a good microphone set-up,means that these flat sets can “compete” with the slightly louder big bore sets. Also low pressure equals ease of playing, but here’s the trade off, easy pressure reeds in big bore chanters, become unstable with weather changes, and if that professional time arrives where the pipe just has to work, OH MAN, OH MAN! A Big Deflation of the Ego can occur, along with the bagpipe! I know Ive BEEN THERE. Yours in Moaning Sean Folsom
I have played a couple of different “big bore” designs, as well as one or two narrow bore chanters. I have also been doubling woodwind instruments (all different size clarinets, saxes, oboe, and bassoon for over twenty years. In my past experience, the bore of the instrument has little to do with the pressure required to successfully play it. I can get a good sound from a bass saxophone (which is about the size of the average redwood tree bent in half) with less air pressure than needed to play a soprano, or alto saxophone. If you would use the oboe/bassoon combination as the closest analogy to the “big bore/narrow bore” chanters, higher pressure for the big bore doesn’t make sense, as the oboe (narrow bore. smaller reed) requires a higher pressure of air delivered than the bassoon (large bore/ large reed). With what experience I have, a well designed large bore chanter, with a good reed requires no more pressure than a well designed, well reeded narrow bore instrument, but the larger bore will require a larger volume of air. You can set up a bassoon, or a large bore chanter to work on a volume of air more closely resembling that required by an oboe/narrow bore chanter, but the air pressure will be higher, and the sound will be lacking harmonically.
Just adding my 4 cents..
dave boling
I wonder if the Taylors sometimes made chanters that WERE tough to play, for robustly-built dudes who wanted that extra volume only they could deliver. Peter Laban has actually played Touhey’s chanter - well, one of them! Maybe Patsy had a couple of sets, but this one is almost certainly his workhorse - I believe he said that (with a new reed made by Wooff) that it wasn’t any great effort to play well. Also that it was loud but actually pleasant to hear - or not nasty. What a notion! Also I have a tape of Andy Conroy playing this chanter, when Andy was, God, 95 or something! And first thing off, he plays a couple of hornpipes that go up to d’‘’. Good man, Andy!
Tom Busby told me that the Taylor stuff was best in “Eb”, and that was what the old boys liked - sounded best, played best there too.
I much prefer the sound of Taylor’s wide-bore stuff to Rowsome’s. Joe Shannon, the Touhey chanter. Sean Folsom! A sweet tone. And they say Joe was louder than ____! Sean heard him up close, when he was, God, 86 or something! Good man, Joe!
Probably a big part of this was simply undercutting and voicing the holes. Even my P. Brown chanter has undercut holes. Those guys could have simply drilled the holes but they chose not to. If you’re not doing that, you’re not making chanters, you’re making chanter-shaped objects.
For one thing the Taylors knew how to make drones, especially their earlier ones are lovely. Rowsome’s sound like a tractor coming down the road.
Taylor regulators are a bit too often of the traffic jam variety, they have a very definite honk off them.
Are these a series of choices you’re giving us, that these people are -
a) God
b) 95/85
c) Something
?? 
Cheers,
DavidG
What’s going on with some pipemaker’s and their crazy ,plucked out of the air design’s . there are only two design’s of pipe’s that are traditional (it is a traditional instrument) and they are, the broad Rowsome style and the Taylor style. Look at the top group of pipemaker’s and you will see they all use these two design’s .The Rowsome style being the most common. So come on lad’s you have too look back to move forward !!!
What are you on about?!?
There are many other designs out than Rowsome and Taylor. And from Willie to Kevin, the Rowsomes used many, many differen’t designs. The standard tuning note changed from A=453 to A=440 over that time too. So makers had to change designs and they certainly didn’t pluck design’s out of the air.
They sat down with charts, mathematical formulae and then a lot of time making prototype’s and deciding on a final design.
Who are in this “top group of pipemakers” anyway.
Any maker will tell you that the are influenced by Willie Rowsome and/or Leo Rowsome. But they don’t copy from them directly, they are all modified.
And who copies Taylor stuff? Apart from external aesthetics no-one today copies Taylor design. The last one was maybe Pat Hennelly.
And what about sets in C#, C, B, Bb…
Did you ever hear a Taylor flat set, you’d be the first.
Not many makers bother copy Rowsome flat sets because all either Rowsome did was copy Egan or Coyne.
etc., etc., etc,…
JD
Ah,
Leave the lad alone. He’s doing his best.
Tommy
Rubbish
I was actually talking about the external look of pipes .It is rubbish to think that we on this forum could have a valid discussion about the internal design of pipes .The plain fact of the matter is that even the best pipemakers in the world don.t really know what they are doing in that regard !! .Their “design” is based on the best chanter they can get their hands on to measure and then copy it ,This is well documented by the pipemakers themselves . The art of a good pipemaker is how good they can copy their chosen chanter. They may adjust the bore or hole placement a little to cure some problem ,but this is hardly designing a chanter
The notion that a pipemaker sit’s down and designs a chanter from scratch with some math’s and some chart or other is well, it just doesn,t happen
RORY
:roll: So who are you pointing your virtual finger at? There’s no smoke without fire 
PD.
I’d love too ,but is it not against the forum policy ,But really the look of pipes comes down to personal choice
Some people like crap looking pipes, that’s up to themselves
RORY
I’ve yet to see a crap looking set of pipes.
So if it was against forum policy, you’d post names?
Anyway, from everything I have heard about David Quinn, slavishly copying is the last thing he would do!!
I don’t many else, but I know Joe Kennedy said his D chanters are partly a design of the reed and partly a design of the chanter, again not a slavish copy.
Um.. that’s all I know about.
There has been some innovation amongst pipemakers in such things as chanter-top design such as the S-shaped air-intake pipes that are becoming more popular.
There are also new designs of stop-valves. Nick Whitmer and David Boisvert both offer stop-valves which depart from the traditional stop-key design. These are more than just cosmetic changes. With NW’s chanter tops the stop-valve doesn’t need to be held closed with one hand, like the traditional design, leaving the piper free to use two hands to tune drones.
Then you have different (new?) chanter key designs used by Howard. Not to mention his ‘iris’.
Some half sets have a G drone (e.g. Boisvert) - is this new?
And what about Jim Daily’s pipes? If you want something that looks different check out his pipes.
Granted most of the above are all small changes, but aren’t we all in general a rather conservative bunch? Isn’t that why we play a 200 + year old instrument instead of a synthesizer? 
Hey, I’ve got a crap-looking set (if you eye it closely). Plus it’s a flat set, AND it’s got a straight bass drone!
I’m a pariah.
PJ, I think that was Rory’s initial point if I’m not mistaken - Makers introducing some - at times funny-looking - aspects to their designs which don’t really appeal to the bulk of pipers who prefer things to stay within ‘traditional’ design parameters ie Rowsome and Taylor, Coyne etc. Jim Daily’s designs don’t appeal to me personally because they seem to overstep the mark of what constitutes traditional UP design. In this post-modern society where anything goes as far as design is concerned he can do what he likes and people will buy them because they like them…but not me.
To those who question the existence of crap-looking sets I’ve seen some pretty crap-lookng pipes both new and old.
Cheers,
DavidG
rubbish, rot mold and garbage… what a lot of junk… there’s not a pipemaker in history didn’t copy somebody else at some point, there ARE a lot of crap looking sets out there..so? what a waste of bandwidth,