I have made quite a few reeds now for several chanters and feel that I can scrape and sand to adjust them as I go along. They end up sounding nice.
I have had 2 reeds (both for the same D chanter)where I did not change any of the dimensions or material but they have the same problem.
The reed is in tune and plays easily but the low E “growls” unless exactly the right amount of pressure is provided. (the high E is fine and slightly more pressure jumps up to it easily).
The other notes are not fussy and play easily.
Is this because I have removed too much material from the apex of the scrape ?
The reed manuals say the the E “Lives in this area of the scrape”.
Tim
could be the chanter. contact the maker. there were chanters made by a name maker that had this problem, until the maker had a re-call, and a revision…which cured the issue.
Sorry, I was not being clear.
I have made several good reeds for this chanter, I just appear to have duplicated the same fabrication error and I am not sure what I did wrong with these particular reeds.
Tim
hard to say…what else is wrong?
I scrape some from the top of the U or V shape toward the lips, avoiding the last 1/8" or so at the lips.
The notes I took at my reedmaking classes say that the behavior of the E and octave E is determined there and the tuning of the E lives in the area just above the staple eye.
I think Fancypiper’s pointers are close to the mark.
I’d do a Google search for Patrick Murray’s undergraduate thesis on reed behavior.
Search terms including ‘Patrick Murray’,‘2002 Undergraduate Thesis’, and ‘Tufts University’ will lead you to any of several sites where this thesis is cached as a PDF.
Some piper’s like to employ a ‘hard E’ (if they can) as well as a ‘hard D’. Unfortunately only a few chanter/reed combinations will reliably produce a ‘hard E’ when it is called.
The zone Fancypiper is referring to is well inside of the area Murray refers to as the ‘Cut-off Length’. This area appears to be an area with a more or less permanent node in the reed.
You might dis-assemble one of these reeds and very closely examine what you have on the inside of the reed just beyond the staple eye under strong light and magnification.
At one time Ted Anderson was working out an extensive map for various parts of a chanter reed. Perhaps he could chime in.
Bob
Peter Hunter had the most extensive reed scrape map I’d ever seen, bar none!
“reed scrape map” is an anagram of “See mad crapper.”
That says it all really.
I found this : http://swaup.biorust.com/reedprint.pdf
Has some reed scraping info.
I just made a reed with less scraping at the apex and it plays with a nice low “E”.
Will have to try a second one to see if I just made a good one by accident or not.
Tim
