I’ve been making and tweaking cane drone reeds lately. To stabilze the pitch I’ve been following the advice of Benedict Koehler by shaving one end and adding wax to the other.
In this case I’m trimming the tip and adding wax to the base of the reed as the pitch was going up with pressure. I now have nice stable tenor and bass drone reeds but the baritone is giving me grief.
Is there any other method for ALL CANE reeds that can help to stabilize the pitch over varied pressure?
For example, I’m wondering about the effect of the width of the tounge relative to the width of the tube. Also does the length of the cane tube also play a major role?
The baritone drone is the trickiest to stabilize, for me anyway. What you can do is place a drinking straw or a very small piece of rolled up paper into the drone itself. This creates an extra bit of back pressure and helps to prevent tuning changes with pressure change.
Place the straw in the part of the drone thats connected to the stock. Don’t use glue or anything to secure it because when you replace the drone slide, the slide part itself will keep the straw in place.
Mind you I’m free from all that since a very kind St. Louis/Kansas piper sent me a couple of quills to try out and since I took them out of the box and put them in the drones, I haven’t seen them since and they’re still singing!!!
Thanks Jeff!!!
I have found thinning the base of the tongue can make them really sensitive to pressure. This is something that needs to be done very judiciously - one or two scrapes at a time to get it to sound and no more.
If its too sensitive to pressure you will have to use a bridle to control the tongue, and that means your scrape is lost under the bridle. I use the small round elastic bands called o-rings, available at harware and automotive supply shops, for drone bridles.