I need to sharpen my bass regulator. I have the reed all the way in and all the stuff off the rush and the a and b notes are still a little flat, 10 cents roughly. I have tried taking the rush (piece of brass wire) out but it makes no difference.
Does anyone know a way to sharpen it up without removing anything from the reed or staple (or altering the body of the instrument of course).
I have thought about waxing the lower side of the holes but haven’t tried this yet.
thanks in advance, Giles
Which of your three sets is the troublemaker, Giles?
You could hack a bit off the staple. But then the C will begin to be sharper - flatter pitched head cancels that out often, more scraping towards the base of the reed. Maybe a narrower bridle will let you get at more of the cane. Or you can put some rush in the staple, thus flattening things out more.
You can put a longer wire on the tuning pin, and rush the C itself if it’s too sharp. Or you can put some filler - rolled up paper, say - above the Cnat note. This will flatten the C more than the B, more so than rush seems to. Or you can have the paper etc. material actually shade the C hole itself.
Lots of ways to skin these cats! Then there’s the effect of various kind of movement of the cork - or putting some extra “cork” ahead of the cork in the endcap itself. I have to do this with my double bass regulators - the extra bore area that the metal extensions create throws the tuning of the wooden sections out a great deal. You can take some cork, hollow out the center so the tuning pin can slide through easily - you’ll want to put the cork in, then fit the endcap on, puncturing the cork to mark it - you want the tuning pin to slide easily through the extra cork, which also needs to be easily removable - then mount your wire ahead of the new cork piece. Voila, shorter regulator bore, which will sharpen the B among other things - it can also unsteady or overblow the G.
cheers Kevin
It is the Wooff B set that has been a little flat in the bass reg.
I will try shortening the bore with cork as the notes are only fractionally flat, it is often un-noticable. I don’t really want to cut anything off the reed or staple, in different weather the reed plays a little sharp and I put nodes on the rush to tune it, this is the preferred working. The whole set is playing brilliantly.
The Fischer D has no bass reg and is playing great too though the slightly different fingering for Cnat tangles me up so I don’t play it much.
The Bflat set is on loan for a while to a great young piper who is putting it to very good use and I hear that it is playing very well.
Similar to Kevin’s idea, you can shorten the bore by using poster putty/blue tack to build up the end cap. This would give you more control of how much you are shortening the bore than just adding a piece of cork.
djm