And so the bidding wars begin! Who is the mysterious Bill_Salmon who always bids on historic pipes? Would whomever ends up with this chanter give us a review once it is received? It’s nice to hear how these auctions really end past the actual winner being announced.
All the best,
Dionys
(agus Antaine, a chara – Níl mé comhalta na Daltaí na Gaeilge, ach tá cur amach agam ar an grúpa… agus tú féin?)
I don’t know what kind of guts I have to bid again on the thing. I put in what I thought was a rather nice bid, only to realize it was below the reserve.
So we’ll see. I wonder what a keyless Rowsome ought to go for? And greenheart? How common a timber is that for a chanter?
Stuart
Considering how much the last chanter went for, I think all bets are off. At least that one turned out to be a very nice one for the extremely high price it went for. I hope this one will turn out to be good for whoever buys it.
Dionys
My thoughts: Back off when the price approaches what a fully keyed chanter from a living pipemaker would charge.
tá beagán Gaeilge agam - foghlaím le DnaG 
Fáilte agus ádh mór ort..
For anyone that speaks Irish and Arabic:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20030312/od_nm/ireland_koran_dc
(Back on topic):
Just to note, the last chanter that sold on Ebay went for well more than what a fully keyed chanter from a modern maker would charge.
The question in my mind if I were to consider bidding, bid or win the stick (other, of course, than “is it a decent chanter with a good tone”) is “who would I ask to key it?”
Dionys
Within the US??
For what it’s worth, this chanter is very similar to one that was given to me some years ago, the man selling it [David Power] is a sound man, he produced the Tommy Kearney CD. It is interesting though that he states that the sound of the chanter is sweet and soft ‘as can be expected fro ma new reed’. My experience with newly reeded chanters is that they sound harsher and sweeten with playing. Ah well.
During the week I found Joe Kennedy and Geoff Wooff coming up my drive way so I am up to speed with the piping gossip. :-), seriously though, I had a long chat last night with Geoff about Rowsomes and design matters, nothing I didn’t already know but good to organise thoughts on things. I don’t believe Rowsome desigened chanter to be rushed, he just designed them very sharp so they HAD to be rushed out of necessity. A change in the standard pitch [1936] may have played a part in this.
As for ‘five generations must have done something right’. Has TOK ever seen sets by Leon? Standing on the shoulders of generations brings no guarantees.
Dear sturob,
GreenHeart is a hard wood that was used in the dock’s and shipyards it was also used to make Loch gate’s on canals only problem is it tends to spit & warp and in some case’s even twist when I was a fisherman I use’d to go to the local boat builders I often heard the word greenheart used from some of the old fisherman having a chat about the old day’s. 
…
Kevin,
In my opinion, pipes don’t work on pressure they work on resonance the pressure is only needed to course the petals of the reeds to vibrate or in other words resonate, the sound wave then travels down
the chanter or drone’s, first you adjust the bridle on the drone reeds so they resonate at the frequency and pressure required then after you alter the length of the drone, the chanter reed you make to your personal working pressure e.g soft or hard reeds the lip’s of the reed resonate under pressure the sound wave travels down the reed in and down the chanter bore the lowest note when the chanters off the knee with all the note holes covered thats the soundwave at its longest, when the chanter’s on the knee, and you lift your fingers off the note holes the sound wave gets shorter and increases up the way in pitch, e.g from the reed lips to the note holes, that’s why you have to scrape drone reeds to get them to resonate at the same pressure as the chanter reed or there a bout’s you also alter pitch of the drone reeds when you scrape and adjust them but once there all resonating at the same pitch under a constant working pressure fact is the reeds are all resonating at a disired working frequency or sound.
Correct me if I’m wrong, and I just noticed this last evening while practicing, and making several more than usual “odd” but very interesting sounds, but isn’t there a certain additional vibration that occurs because of the metal rush, which can, and perhaps does enhance the overall tone. This additional vibration, adding a metallic depth (or dimension) to the sound, may indeed be a part of the design.(?)
Does anyone notice this? Or am I talking through my hat? But I am putting forth a serious supposition here, so be kind.
Elbgo yes your right,
the metel rush will resonate as the sound wave moves up and down the chanter bore but the main purpose for the rush is to help bring the note hole or chanter bore to its correct pitch or sound required they are just helpful aids but they dont always work.
Sorry about spelling “Elbogo” I keep forgettting the two ooo’s
Alan Froment D chanters are designed to play with a rush, usually going as far as th A hole. I’ve played Leo Rowsomes pipes at Kevins house, the chanter was rushed and Kevin seemed to think it was original. In theory the rush only flattens the bottom octave notes. I can make a wide bore concert pitch that plays without a rush but to be honest the ones with rushes play better!
Dear Brendan,
I think were the problem lie’s is in the old day’s they were
having problem getting the second octave with these big bore chanters
and I think Leo Rowsome knew this and worked on this by reducing the
bore size only problem was the chanter pitch went up to around
443 pitch some of the rowsome copie’s which I posess have a throat size of 5.40-5.50mm and the bell size’s 14.26mm which were probably a round the original dimension’s I think some of Leo’s later chanters have throat size 5.20mm and a bell size of around 13.70mm that’s around the
size of bore which I think should should be spot on for a concert D chanter, but you might have to lengthen the chanter slightly at a guess
2or3 mm to compensate for reducing the chanter bore.
This one ends with very little interest.
Sturob was high bidder at $710 - reserve not met.
Stew,
To claim that pipes don’t work because of pressure sort of ignores the fact that pressure has quite a bit of bearing on the function of a double reed as a generator. Reed generators are basically pressure-controlled valves. Double reeds are valves where the blowing pressure tends to force the reed valve closed (unlike the human larynx which forces the ‘reed valve’ open). There are two main thresholds for a reed generator that are important to the generation of what I believe you were referring to as “resonance.” The lower threshold below which the valve is ineffective as a generator and an upper point which corresponds to a closing point. The conical bore design allows the octave overblowing.
The pipe bore itself acts as a high quality resonator with the air column coupled to the reed generator. You have to take a number of things into consideration including reservoir impedance and pipe-resonator impedance. UP reservoir impedance is very much different from typical orchestral woodwinds in that the reservoir volume is a tube instead of the player’s mouth (immediate reservoir volume).
I’m not even going to try to address taking into consideration Bernoulli forces in the staple and happy little minutia like that.
When you come to drone reeds (similar in the manner in which it works to an organ pipe w/metal reed), you have to find the best balance between tuning the tongue of your drone and the pipe resonator. If you are going for the strongest sound, you’re trying to align the resonances of the two parts of the system (i.e. reed & drone-pipe).
So anyhow. I have to respectfully disagree and say that pressure is an integral part of how Uilleann Pipes work and enters into many of the equations both when making pipes and playing them. To point out examples: Many pipers adjust the pressure on the bag for many reasons. Some to bring a particularly troublesome note into tune, or in the case of a hard d to bring out a different timbre.
To say that the reed ‘resonates’ is really a misuse of the term resonate. What the reed does is modulate the air stream. It’s the chanter bore that does the resonating. You might get away with saying the reed resonates if you take into consideration the staple. I’d still say, however, that the reed acts as a modulator.
As for why Rowsome made the modifications and changes to the bore he did, we can only speculate. Regarding the copies, they may have been completely faithful copies, or they may have been copies that are not accurate to the originals, or more importantly to the originals at the moment they came out of Leo’s hands. It’s hard enough to speculate from the originals after the years may have caused changes in the size and measurements of their bores (not to mention people who have fiddled with them over the years). Harder still to make extrapolations from copies of ‘originals.’
Dionys
…Dionys. Well said.
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