Yesterday I was helping a friend set up his regulators. We got them in tune just fine, but I couldn’t play his regs. For the life of me, I couldn’t reach them, and he couldn’t either. In order to reach the low notes I would have to over-extend my leg and my body.
My friend tried using a strap to help him reach the regs to no avail. Neither of us have any trouble with the reach on my Seth Gallagher set, even with no strap. It turns out that the drone stock on his set is a full three and a half inches longer than on mine - 9.5 inches from the bag to the end of the regulators.
He also has a traditional Irish straight bass reg bar. The bar just makes the reach that much harder because the arm has to get around it. At this point, he’s thinking about fitting a Taylor-style wrap-around bass reg. My feeling is that the only easy solution to this connundrum is a shorter stock. I think making the part that fits to the bag shorter would help him a lot. On his set, this piece is wood and metal and over three inches long. We could replace the piece on the bag with a 1.5 inch length of large, brass tubing. Does anyone have some thoughts on that?
I’m also interested in people’s thoughts about fitting regs to different-sized people. What are some good methods?
A set with a straight bass bar particularly, sometimes, has to be played up and down (almost vertical) rather than across (flat on the lap) which has become quite in vogue of late.
For the vertical style of playing you need to sit on the edge of your seat and twist the stock away from you a little so the regs are facing your audience quite a bit.
Here’s an example of the vertical method:
And the across method:
If your friends set is a flat set you may need a shoulder strap. They should persist though. Too many people these days change their surroundings to suit them… why not try to adapt to the surroundings your faced with?
My $0.02USD is that Patrick’s right per pointers he gave me. Also, one’s body factors in. My upper arms are not so long, so the flat method is impossible for me. A turn of the regs outward, a shoulder strap, and it’s a whole new world.
Maybe the pic of Maire ni isn’t the best example, when i was taking the shot she had had the set less than an hour and wasn’t exactly sitting properly to play the regs. She was turning her upper body towards the regulators, which is counterproductive as they only slide further away, if she had turned her upper body to the left the regs would have been sitting slightly higher up and under a different angle over her leg, her right hand would have fallen over the middle chord which would have made all keys easily accessible.
I’m looking forward to seeing the set again to try your suggestions, Patrick. Seeing two well-made sets with totally different ergonomic designs has been a good learning experience for me.
It’s very interesting that there are not only different styles for holding the
set, but that the different styles of sets require the different styles. There seems to be no way to play my friend’s set in the more horizontal position.
if she had turned her upper body to the left the regs would have been sitting slightly higher up
and under a different angle over her leg, her right hand would have fallen over the middle chord
That’s extremely helpful, Peter. While I’m sure I’d ~partly~ discovered that technique, I was still doing other inefficient contortions to get proper hand placement. Turning to the left is effective, efficient, and I don’t have to degrade the posture I feel is good for chanter playing.
