rubber bags on gaita gallega??? Luife, is it so?

nope.
teachable moment here for you pal:
There’s nowhere for condensation to go in a rubber bag. It cant evaporate through the material. In fact the lower the RH, the more condensation accumulates in the innertube.
BUT:
Let’s ask a real Gaitero:
What says you, Luife?
ever seen gaitas with rubber , innertube(tire tube) bags???

Gaita makers Xose Seivane and Xose Reboredo used rubber for their bags in the 1970’s and 80’s. I’ve seen both red rubber, and black rubber, the latter of which MIGHT have originally been from truck inner tube. The seams on these bags were all cut and glued with overlap on the back, though, like we often make vinyl bags for UP today.

Condensation is definitely a problem. My friend Antonio Torres Duton from Pontevedra used to remove his chanter, blowpipe and drones after each playing in order to try to dry the bag out, and would use antiseptic to kill bacteria every once in awhile.

Xose Seivane now uses Gore-Tex instead:

Bag
Made from Gore-Tex®, very ergonomic with its size being adaptable to the build of each person.

http://www.seivane.es/en/nuestras_gaitas/index2_1.html

I´m agree with Papuga: the wort problems of rubber bag are the condensation. It was usual to see bagpipes with rubber bag with a little hole in the down part of the bag, for open it and expel the water of the bag. Also the rubber bags rot the wooden parts with the excess of humidity.

But this is a past thing: Today you only will see rubber bags in some bagpipes of old mans. Goretex it´s definitively the king of materials, but some romantic persons like me are using the goat bags… Good tact, good and rural smell…Very good :slight_smile:

Here I post a photo of and old Galician Bagpipe with rubber bag and the water valve.

Photobucket

yes, that’s brilliant, the built-in valve;
I had tried to rig something on my old zampogna bag with no sucess.
ended up also losing a zampogna blocco to wood rot.
Gore-tex (and ‘win-tex’ in Italy) are now becoming welcome replacements.
(I too prefer the goat bag. Luife: we are both ‘romantics’, eh?)

of course we all three know what we’re talking about.

So, then: in no way does the Iberian climate “mitigate the moisture problem” as my good friend Mr Bayley so mistakenly believes. :thumbsup:

Grazie Amici

" (I too prefer the goat bag. Luife: we are both ‘romantics’, eh?) "

Of course My Friend, I think we are very similar persons, you must travel to Spain for play toghether and talk about Philosophy, Bagpipes and Music :slight_smile:

About the Iberian Climate, it´s very different in the zones of the geography.

For example, I live in the south of Spain. It means I ALWAYS have problems with reeds for the “desert climate” of my city.

But when I travel to the north, to Galicia, I have “Plug and Play” bagpipes, with no reeds problems.

With the boxwood we find the same problem. In my city, all boxwood bagpipes are curved, but it´s difficult to find a curved bagpipe in the north of Spain.

:frowning:

Hello,

I have very nice gaita galega by Antón Corral and J. Peréz of Lugo, Galicia. We believe that it was made during Corral’s apprenticeship with Peréz some time around the 1950s. It originally had a rubber bag made from a black intertube, which was wonderfully air-tight and wood-destroying.

As you might imagine, by the time I got the gaita years later, the wooden stocks had rotted. At least one had already been replaced already. The stock for the blowpipe was especially bad, totally eaten away below where it met the bag. That gaita now has a Gortex bag, fitted by Carlos Moreno García in Gijón, Asturias (www.GaitaAsturiana.com). He does excellent work, although he specializes in the Asturian gaita.