Reeds with higher placed bridles

Uilleann Pipes
1

G-day guys,
I am interested in anyones experiences with higher bridle placements on longer reeds. From all the material that I’ve found on the net about this in relation to reed-making, the general advice seems to be to keep it low for the sake of ease of the second octave and quietening the reed (both of which I am keen to achieve). However, so many of the reed pictures I’ve seen have bridles as far as half way up the reed head.

My range of bridle placement goes from immediately above the binding or else no more than 2mm above it as I have found that any higher causes the tuning to go all over the place and the notes become very unstable. I imagine this may have something to do with my usual reed specs of a short reed with a very widened and heavily scooped ‘U’ (short as a result of flat back D’s and a flat second octave, and scooped into a wide ‘U’ to achieve concert pitch and fight those nasty gurgling bottom D’s caused by the shortening of the reed head).

I’ve been making a couple of reeds per month for the last three years and feel like I’ve exhausted all the slight deviations around my type of reed design. I fell that it is time to try something entirely new so if anyone can offer some advice around making a longer reed with a higher bridle placement to keep the back D and second octave from going flat, I’d appreciate it.

All the best.

from your chiffin chum, your fipplin friend, your piping pal
Goldy.

2

Hi Goldy,

My current reed has the bridle as far as almost half way up the head, so about 10mm up from the binding.
I did this because of the pitch being too high and the Back D being too flat. Brian Howard told me on the phone that moving the bridle up and squeezing it in brings the pitch down, sharpens the back D but without the reed becoming any louder. Works well. All notes in tune.

I’ve been talking to Malcolm McLaren who has recently acquired the NPU reedmaking DVD and he has been impressed with many of the different things that the 4 (or is it 3?) makers do to make a reed. Might be an idea to get yourself a copy if all your other reedmaking avenues have been exhausted.

Cheers,

DavidG

3

Cheers David.

I was of the understanding that moving the bridle up sharpens the reed as it essentially stiffens and shortens the reed head. However, this is more of me reciting theory that I have read so what I actually need to do is have a go and see what happens. There are many of us who have found the reality to be different from the theory.

On the reed design side, is your current reed one of the ‘ready-tie’ ones from Brian ? (i.e. 80mm length / 12.5mm width with a 20mm ‘U’ shaped scrape). I’d like to know what scecs work with the higher bridle placement.

Goldy.

4

Goldy,

I play a Dinny Quigley chanter that I bought second hand in Dublin. It came with a reed by an unknown maker. This reed has a very highly placed bridle and is longer than most other reeds I’ve seen. Initially, as a beginner, I found the reed hard to blow, but it was dead stable on back D (good), hard to sound on bottom D, but gave a good hard bottom D (also good) when you did ‘hit it’ right. The reed was always easy to jump from low to high octave (good). For a beginner though, it was not ‘responsive’ as they say. On balance, however, a working reed and good for my purposes as a beginner.

After playing the reed in Ireland for about a year, I moved home to Canada. Trouble set in-- or at least I thought it had. I experimented with reeds made by a Canadian pipemaker. Initially, I was absolutely thrilled with those reeds. They were shorter, easier to blow and had a lower bridle placement. They weren’t as stable on back D and were often troublesome when shifting up to the second octave and the bottom D wasn’t as satisfying. Nonetheless, it was fun to play an easy to blow and more responsive reed for a while.

At Christmas this year, my Canadian made reeds pooped out on me. Crisis. What to do? I went to Dinny Quigley in Dublin. He made me two reeds for the chanter with the usual (low) bridle placement. Longer than the Canadian made reeds, but still shorter than the mystery reed and lower bridle placement. Upon returning to Canada, one reed died immediately. The other was troublesome, then I managed to acclimate it to Canada, and it played extremely well till mid-January. It then gave up the ghost. (I’m hoping they will both revive in the spring). In total desperation I returned to my peculiar original reed, made by the unknown reed maker, with the high placed bridle. I hadn’t played it for a couple of months. Low and behold, it seemed to thrive in the central heat and bone-dry indoor air of January/February in Toronto. That peculiar old reed has been singing like a bird to and including the present time. It has been easy to blow, in perfect tune, hasn’t needed adjustment. Pure magic. Knock on wood, it continues its current happy streak.

I’m not sure whether anything can be learned from the foregoing, just another bizarre tale from reed-land. Actually, my theory is that a stiff, thick, hard to blow reed (you can see a lot of the reed bark still on it) with high bridle placement and thicker cane may be some kind of benefit in the very trying climatic conditions prevailing in my extremely centrally heated, bone dry apartment. Note: I have not used any humidifiers this winter at all.

Does thick cane and high bridle placement assist with extreme climates? Maybe. What do others think?

5

Hi Goldy, no it’s not a ready-tie reed. I’ve not had much success with those as yet. Whilst they play moderately well, I still have trouble getting them to hold high A and B. Brian’s givien me some hints how to fix this problem, which is where the phone call and tip about bridle placement came from, but I’m still not getting satisfactory results. I’ll keep trying.

Cheers,

DavidG

6

Gregorygraham,
It’s interesting to hear (but not good to hear) that you have had troubles with reeds in your dry climate. Canberra in Australia is also a very dry climate (the January/February figures from the bureau of meterology shows average humidity levels of 30% and can be as low as 10% at times).

Does thick cane and high bridle placement assist with extreme climates? Maybe. What do others think?

Yes. stiffer reeds and harder cane resists weather effects better than softer reeds. However, people have had success combating these effects by grain raising and polishing or oiling reeds to guard against humidity effects.