I’ve been retro-fitting an old reed to a recently acquired Robbie Hughes chanter (thanks Mukade!). It was pretty sharp in the upper octave, especially G and A, so following various advice I’ve been gradually lessening the depth of insertion of the staple into the reed head. I’ve now reached a point where the staple is about 6mm further out of the reed head that it was originally, and the reed sits about 2cm deep into the chanter throat to play at pitch.
The upper octave is now beautifully in tune with the lower octave. All is well except for one note: the lower octave B, which has gone horribly flat (having been fine beforehand).
I was wondering what’s going on… Could this be a result of the reed sitting so deep in the throat of the chanter? If so, should I try cutting a little off the bottom of the staple? Or might there be another explanation?
All suggestions welcome. I’m making an effort to get hang of reed tinkering and adjustment, so don’t mind too much if I end up destroying this reed - a learning experience and all that…
Sounds as though you may have gone too far with pulling the staple out, 6mm is a lot.
Cutting the staple may sharpen other notes in the second octave, not what you want. Sounds to me as though you need a smaller staple (i.e. smaller inner diameter).
You might try pushing the staple back in partway, until the B resolves, then putting a small wire into the staple to reduce its inner diameter.
Thanks for the suggestions. I wondered if I was going a bit far with pulling out the staple that much, but I was enjoying honing my “taking reed apart and putting back together” skills and perhaps got a bit carried away…!
The odd thing is that it plays so well, bar the one flat note. But you’re probably right that I should try rush in the staple before doing anything irreversible…
The C nat and C# notes are “flat” to equal temperament and your ears may be adjusted to that unless you have played/listened to a just intonation tuned instrument for quite a while (7 years?).
1st: I would find a way to play against a drone note to judge tuning. The note is in tune if they harmonize and you don’t hear a wow-wow type of beat. My ears have tricked me several times and when I finally plug into my half set for final tuning, my reed may be way off, so I trust tuning against the dones for my final tuning.
2nd: A sharp upper octave can be adjusted quickly and reversably with a wire rush in the staple, and you can adjust to affect either certain notes or to make the octaves parallel.
You can fold a small wire rush to make areas in the staple smaller to tune some notes (other notes may be affected, especially 5ths, 7ths and octaves in my experience), so I would reposition the staple and play around with different rushes to see if I could get the notes/playing pressures as parallel as possible.
3rd: When you begin making your own reeds, adjust the staple dimentions to fit what you discovered with your rushing experiences.
4th: Be greatful that you don’t have a flat octave
5th: There is always that “one note” that is “off”…