I recently made a reed that has a tiny leak somewhere along the side. Block the leak, I wrapped the head of the reed in plumbers’ teflon tape. It stopped the leak but also quietened the reed significantly. I thought maybe this was just the one reed so I tried a few others. The results were all the same. A bit of teflon tape around the head of the reed (1.5 to 2.5 wraps) was sufficient to significantly quieten the reed. The best part was that it didn’t affect the tuning.
I thought this might be of interest appartment dwellers who are conscious of upsetting their neighbours with full volume concert pitch chanters.
I just made a reed that balances nicely in the chanter, but it’s loud (played in a Cocobolo chanter). I was just taking it down to my Frankenreed laboratory, when I caught your post and thought it wouldn’t do any harm to try out the idea.
Pic
It did quiet it down. It did NOT change the tuning (wow…). It made the hard bottom D easier to obtain than before. Back D felt a little weak The chanter does have a rush - one guitar string.
The one thing I would say is that it takes a lot of the voice (not just volume) from the sound of the chanter. For this reason, I wouldn’t recommend doing this for anything but practising.
So far my experience is that when you remove the tape you get the reed back the way it was - in other words, no permanent damage. But I’ve only been trying this for a few weeks - clinical trials are still a long way off …
Good question. The trick is that when you’re applying the tape (which is non-adhesive), you cut it straight with scissors or a razor, instead of breaking it by stretching - that way the end is easy to spot and remove.
I’ve not had trouble removing it.
Again, I would only recommend this for people who want to practise and have noise-sensitive neighbours.
