Has anyone ever tried the reeds made for Uilleann Practice Set by Bagpipes Galore in their chanters. The website says they will work in other chanters as well..???
You may get some notes out of it but certainly not two octaves. You may also get some notes from a whoopie cushion (rubber rude noisemaker) valve attached to a staple and would probably be just as musically useful. Lots of attempts have been made for plastic reeds for other instruments but none have gained much acceptance. They also sound like crap, as will these abominations. The natural materials produce the best tone. One cane supplier once wrote that cane might not be the perfect material to make reeds from, being neither perfectly straight or round, but it beats the heck out of almost anything else for the sound it can produce. Elder and other woods have had some success in chanter reed making, but the synthetics have not yet proven themselves.
Ted
I wouldn’t believe it if I were you. Even regular cane reeds aren’t going to be functional in different chanters most of the time.
I don’t believe anyone has even approached trying all the possible synthetic materials available. Chanter reeds are a bit of an exception due to the high demands made on them for range, pitch and colour, as Ted noted. However, for drone reeds, all manner of combinations have been tried, with varying degrees of success. There have been somewhat fewer attempts for reg reeds, but the potential is still there. I don’t know if anyone has tried carbon fibre yet (?).
djm
I made a very nice sounding reed from .020 styrene plastic. First I wraped the styrene around a coke can with a thin sheet of metal around it and bound it with rubber bands. Then I dipped it into boiling water for about 30 seconds and let it cool off. It now has the curved shape that I needed and it keeps it pretty well. Then I just used my regular reed dimentions and it worked out pretty good..
I’m glad your reed works for you. David has a good point, there are so many synthetic materials out there that, surely, there has to be something that will be spot on for making synthetic reeds… but who really wants to look? I might, but I am having way too much fun being obssessed by Arundo. 
Joseph E. smith wrote:
surely, there has to be something that will be spot on for making synthetic reeds…
You’re probably right there Joseph, but stop calling him Shirley! 
That’s, after the fairies visited and enchanted all the uilleann pipes in the world.
..sorry…
I bougth one sometime ago, didn’t work first at all,and after few hours fixing, hard to play and same poor dull sound. I accieved better results with
modifying pc(practice chanter of GHB) plastic reed., but never as good as cane reed.