Can any reed makers share their experence of what adjusting the staple eye does to the tuning of a reed.
I’ve been having flat second octave problems since I started making reeds and have recently started fiddling with the staple eye to try and fix it (I recently closed the eye from a 2mm elevation to a 1.7mm elevation). I think it helped, but I always make so many adjustments to the scrape, reed length, and bridle settings in a short period of time that I don’t give myself time to realise what changed what. Therefore, can someone give some basic pointers about the staple variables please (I am trying to put off reaming out the staple to fix the octave)
Goldy,
The main things I’ve been taught about staple eye adjustment is:
Narrowing the eye can stabilise an awkward sounding 8ve e, and also stabilize high b if it needs more than necessary pressure to keep the note.
Opening the eye can help in tuning around high a + b, but the above mentioned high b thing means you can cure and create problems at the same time.
A wider staple eye makes a reed more prone to ‘breaking’ back D.
The gradient of the ‘flare’ in the staple is also important in that it has a direct effect on the way the reed shapes itself to the staple, and this directly affects the reedheads internal volume, again making for all sorts of desirable and undesirable outcomes. It also affects the side of the reed head, causing ‘collapse’ or opening the eye too much (therefore needing heavier cranking to close the eye) I use a mandril that has a 14:1 taper and seems just about right (I think that over time, your mandril should be replaced as it the constant beating changes it’s shape incrementally over time without you noticing. Though altering the flares gradient is also useful (the chanters that I find annoying with sharp high a + bs can be cured by having a steeper (and maybe longer) flare.
Having said this, you will find that exactly the opposite to what you expect will happen shrug.
Alan
Another thought…I’m not one for gluing staples to the head, but I’ve noticed that tying on can cause the reed head to twist on the staple, and that can’t be good, and gluing might lessen the chance, but use something like uhu that is not going to set the reed together forever so you can deconstruct when necessary
I noticed on Pat Sky’s page he said that moving the reed in and out of the seat affects the first octave more than the second. If the second octave is flat, can you move the reed further out of the seat to correct the problem, or is it too far out of tune?
Ignorantly inferring from what Pat writes, could this point to the staple or overall reed length being made a little too short?
Thanks Alan.
I will take your advice into consideration. I have always come so close to an excellent reed, with just one or two notes causing angst. I had a new reed playing brilliantly last night, but a flat back D beckoned me to trim the reed, leaving me with a gurgling bottom D. I’ll eventually get it right or will learn to put up with the bad notes - (My wife would love for me to do that because then I would actually play the pipes insted of playing scales and and continuous breaks form A to bootom D)
Eric,
I have tried the standard adjustments of depth into chanter etc. and what you said about retracting the staple is true. I am venturing into staple changing territory because those adjustments wern’t quite enough to get the results I am looking for.
The frustrating “Quest for the perfect reed” continues
Just a random thought, Goldy: Are you trying to tune the chanter alone, or are you trying to tune it against the drones? Chanters aren’t supposed to be perfectly in tune with themselves. They are supposed to be in tune with the drones, so if you are tuning droneless, you may be making more problems for yourself than you need to.
djm,
I have no drones and so am trying to achieve '“relative tuning” in my chanter (relative to an uilleann pipes drone sound that I have created on a synthesizer that is). Therefore, I am trying to achieve an identical pitch in both octaves (440 in an ideal World).
Sometimes I wish that I didn’t have such a good sense of pitch so that I could just play the pipes without getting frustrated. I have heard flawless pitched pipes in various recordings so I know that such a reed is possible to make. Hence, “The Quest” continues to consume me.
I’VE JUST REALISED THAT ‘THE LORD OF THE RINGS’ STORY MAY HAVE BEEN INSPIRED BY A STORY SIMILAR TO MY “QUEST”
My"Quest" is just like Frodo’s journey in ‘Lord of the Rings’, where he is on a mission to take the ring to Mordor, but the ring starts to consume him as he gets closer to fulfilling his mission. This is the case with me and reed making (my wife would vouch for that). Let’s hope that I don’t end up falling into a volcanoe’s lava clutching my flawless reed like Golum did with the ring.
