Hi,
A few years ago (must be 20 at least) I was a guest at the house of Eamonn Walsh of Tallaght on the outskirts of Dublin. To keep this short, Eamonn had recently won the All Ireland piping comps playing his old Kenna set (C#) and he was showing me the chanter reed. I was a novice piper really and if my memory serves me right the reed was made by a Frenchman but the staple had the appearance of having the the head of the reed tied to the narrow part of the staple and the largest part of the taper at the bottom. Now I knew then as I do now that the opposite is usually the case. This does seem to make sense to me as the staple is following the taper of the chanter.
Now this may seem a really dumb question but has this been tried by other reed makers? Is it viable to do it this way?
I have only ever seen it on Eamonn’s Kenna set (I’ve never seen him since that time) and as I said earlier I was very much a novice. I dare not even touch a reed then never mind try to make one. Now however, if I saw another I would have a go at it. Anyone tried and had success?
Joseph (the UK one) 
I seem to recall others referring to the reverse staple as being an invention of the Taylor brothers. It is, at least, an old design, and obviously works. I’ve not tried it (having enough problems making normal reeds).
djm
The Taylors did use the reverse taper as a standard. I was present when Geoff Wooff disected the reed fro mthe Touhey chanter a few years ago, it was probably made by Mike Carney but the staple was beautifully made and quite possibly Taylor’s work. Geoff couldn’t really figure out at short notice how to make one anyway.
I remember Eamonn’s Kenna. An ad appeared in one of the Dublin papers ‘Bagpipe for sale’. On the off chance he checked it out and took the kenna away for (if I remember well) around 100 pound. That was during the early 80s. The story was that it was hard to reed, I heard him play it a couple of times (probably have the tape somewhere in the box) and the chanter sounded rather dead and inflexible but maybe a reedmaker managed to give it a voice since.
So it seems that a reverse taper can work. Interesting.
As far as I know Eammon got the set (2 regulators from what I remember) from Matt Keirnan of Cabra. I went around to Matts the following year and bought a C# chanter from him. The internal dimensions taken from the Kenna. That said, Matt had to extend the chanter bottom by about 10mm using a longer brass ferrule to bring the bottom D note down. The chanter was turned from greenheart and Matt told me that he used to get his supply from the old docks on the Liffey as it was used extensively for the moorings there. I was happy with its tone once I had a brighter reed made for it.
Talking of the tone of the original Kenna chanter, I was impressed with it. It was I think slightly sharper than C# but flatter than D. Probably in- between. Eamonn sent me a tape of his playing the following year (I think I still have it somewhere) and it was sounding fine. Then again, I suppose it’s the man behind the pipes who could get the best out of it.
Anyone know the general rules for producing a reverse staple?
Joseph (the UK one)
You have this backwards, actually. Smaller at the head end is standard. Reverse tapers aren’t necessarily hard to make, the biggest problem is that your mandrel can only be as wide as the narrow, bottom end, thus the flattened part isin’t fully supported by the mandrel. I called up Wooff last year and he actually kind of raved about the beauty of the work on the Taylor Touhey staple, it was a first class job apparently, as you’d expect. It should be said that the Taylors also soldered the seams of the tube before flattening, and I believe they liked to work in brass more than copper. Tom Kennedy’s website had photos of Taylor reeds, Craig Fischer’s SRS article had dimensions and photos of reeds from a Taylor set. The bass reed was monsterous - 3 inch staple. A flat set reed - Coyne? - with a much narrower head also had a very long staple.
My P. Brown chanter needs a reverse taper staple as well, for the simple fact that the reed seat is very narrow, if you put the wide end in there you wouldn’t have much room in the staple and the second octave would be very flat. As it is 2.0o x .56 x .52 works well, with a head width of about 7/16. Any wider and the back D doesn’t work. The reed head must be quite short, too, and the chanter needs a rush to bring the 2nd octave into tune. The rush doesn’t affect the playability, the second octave is a snap to get all the way up to high D.
I think the Taylors were simply trying to keep the throat of the chanter small, which helps bring on the hard D. Craig wrote me about the Taylor design being very unusual in certain respects, I wish he come out of hiding and share some more of his knowledge about these things.
Back in the 1970’s when I first started making reeds I used the reverse taper for years in my Rowsome Chanter. Patrick Henley of Chicago and Tom Busby also used the reverse taper. Back then I wrote the first reed making book called “The Insane Art of Reedmaking” describing how to make the reverse staple reed. I expanded this booklet and put it in my “Manual For the Uilleann Pipes” along with descriptions of making other types of staples.
The reverse taper produces the best bottom D of any of the staples.
It also improves the back D and the sometimes the 2nd octave. Also, with the wider staple head the reed is less likely to split. Somewhere along the line I went over to a straight staple which I use today. I cannot for the life of me remember why I gave up the reverse staple… actually… I think I’ll try it again.
All the best,
Pat Sky
The thing with the Touhy staple that geoff has is that it actually has a double taper , its narrow at the head ,widen,s out then narrows down at the end again .Geoff can,t figure out how it was made !!!
RORY
I heard the version i told above first from Sean Donnelly the year Eamonn bought the set and have heard it several times since, for what it’s worth.
What I said about the tone was really that it sounded but you could stand on your head and do a dance around the chanter it would only give one tone for each note, it didn’t respond in any way to crossfingering or other attempt at changing the note which i think makes it pretty much expression-less. Several reed makers came to the same conclusion over time but maybe someone has found the right reed recipe for it since.
Hi Peter,
I have not spoken to or seen Eamonn for many many years. Does he still own/play the Kenna set. The last I heard of him he was playing a D set made in a ‘compact’ style with a lions head on the stock (I think). That of course was when Matt was still alive so it will give you some indication of how many years I am talking about here.
Your reference to tone. I certainly don’t remember Eamonn standing on his head or doing a dance. Er, have you been wandering in fields where strange mushrooms grow by any chance 
I am wondering how Eamonn won the All Ireland (playing the Kenna set) if the tone of the Kenna was as bad as you make out.
Joseph (the UK one)
There was an article on Eamonn and his (new Rogge) pipes in the lates Piobaire.
It’s not as much that the tone was bad, it was limited to the one tone, the chanter was totally inflexible.
Another example of a chanter with this problem I have come across is a Taylor chanter owned by Rolf Knusel, Rolf has been trying different reedstyles in it and he has made some improvements over the years but overall the chanter will play only the one tone for each note and won’t refuses to respond to cross fingering and other attempts to add tonal colour. As such the chanter has a nice tone but is like a concertina, you open the hole and you get the one tone.
Ofcourse some pipemakers have this feature added as standard 
I don’t see whyyou can’t win an all ireland by keeping the chanter on the knee using standard tutor fingering without any tonal variation. Most pipers don’t use their chanter to it’s full potential so few would notice.
Back to my original thread and reverse taper staples. Thanks for the response. Anyone own a chanter that works with both types of staple and if so any preferences? Further, what are the actual tonality differences? Are they more difficult to construct?
I’m obviously no expert in reedmaking but as a layman it just seems more logical to me if the the taper in the staple is in sympathy with the reed and follows the narrow to wide profile.
Joseph (the UK one)