I have been doing some research and have found synthetic reeds for drones, but haven’t seen anything written or offered about synthetic chanter reeds.
Question: Are there synthetic reeds out there somewhere? If so what would be the pros or cons to going synthetic?
Thanks
Keith,
Why don’t you worry about playing what you’ve got for now?
Synthetic reeds have been discussed, although you’ll find most people refer to them as plastic.
Search for plastic chanter reeds and you’ll find lots of info about how crappy and useless they are. (Paraphrasing, but that’s what I got out of it).
Or you could take a moment, and practise applying steady bag pressure while playing long tones.
Nico
Keith,
No one has yet been able to develope an adequate synthetic UP chanter reed. There have been attempts, but the 2nd octave business seems to be the constant hurdle. I’ve a friend and pipemaker who has made vast inroads into GHB plastic reeds for which he is fast gaining a sought after reputation amongst pipemajors around the globe. But as for UP, he is still scratching his head.
His synthetic drone reeds are top-notch and in his design of UP drone, which is slightly different from the usual, you couldn’t tell his composite drone reeds apart from well-made cane drone reeds.
His name is Malcolm McLaren. If you are interested in his drone reeds or plastic GHB reeds, PM me for his email address.
Cheers,
DavidG
David Daye seems to have had some initial success in this arena…
http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/~bdaye/plastrd.html
Peace!
Reepicheep
Nearly ten years since that article was written and no one seems to say anything anymore about playing with these reeds. Can we therefore assume that they have failed somewhere along the way, or are there pipers out there using plastic successfully?
Cheers,
DavidG
Arundo Donax sounds much better, even if you can make a plastic one that actually works, IMHO.
There have been several versions of plastic reeds to replace/eliminate cane reeds for several instruments, such as GHBs, saxophone, oboe. I know that there are a lot of GHB players happy to use plastic, but the sax and oboe plastic reeds sound so different that they have not caught on much. They are extremely hard to play, even more than the hardest of cane reeds, and since they are plastic, you can count on them never getting easier.
I have not heard every plastic reed, but the ones I have to hand for oboe and UPs do NOT sound anything like a cane double reed. They have their own voice entirely. I suppose if you like their clear, nasal kazoo sound you might go for them, but personally I don’t care for their sound at all - and all this before even considering whether you might get them in tune over two octaves. They just sound wierdly unpleasant.
djm
I came from the sax and bassoon to the pipes. My experience with those instruments includes trying plastic reeds -
I have tried plastic bassoon reeds that worked just about OK - a double reed so perhaps more comparable to a chanter reed. The best of them played better than a really bad cane reed, but much less well than the best, properly adjusted cane. The ultimate limitation was that the tone lacked the richness and interest of a cane reed. I make my own bassoon reeds and good purchased ones are not super expensive. I’d put plastic bassoon reeds onto the ‘why bother’ category.
I persisited with a number of brands of sax reed - a single reed so perhaps less comparable, but it needs to do many of the same things as a chanter reed. There are a number of plastic reeds that work well in terms of response, intonation, dynamic range, flexibility, but again the tone is two dimensional compared to a cane reed. They are good enough for me to have one as a backup though.
Having gained enough experience on the chanter to realize some of the reed issues and made a couple of OK but not yet good enough reeds, I don’t think I’d waste my time. The prospect of a perfect plastic reed that lasted forever is appealing, but plastic sax reeds do blow out - lose their resilience. The same might be true for a chanter reed.
In terms of making a reed (I have way more experience here on bassoon than pipes) I’d say reed quality is only one variable amongst many, and if you inspect visually and test for hardness you can reduce that variable considerably. Dimensions, scrape and opening seem to be the biggest challenge.
Ummm… actually Daye’s article only 8 years old (which seems to be the age of most of his web articles). His initial success seems to indicate that plastic reeds are not out of the realm of possibility (but clearly more R&D is needed). Does anyone here know if Daye has gotten any closer to making plastic chanter reed?
I posted the link more for information’s sake and not as a wholesale endorsement of plastic reeds (… I have no desire to stir that pot).
Peace!
Reepicheep
BTW:
Not nice. :roll:
yes, 8 years, which is ‘nearly ten years’ We call it rounding up 
Doesn’t seem like it otherwise we’d have heard more about it between nearly ten years ago and now 
.
No pot stirred here. The link was useful and the sound clip interesting. Thanks for that.
Cheers,
DavidG
I have had success developing synthetic reeds that will play not only the standard two octaves of the uilleann pipes, but a third (higher). I make the blades out of yoghurt containers (cut and sanded), a special kind of thread (polystyrene), and model car glue. They are as stable as synthetic (“plastic,” for the pedantic ones out there) drone reeds. They sound great!
Roman, are you using this synthetic reed full-time in your chanter? Could you maybe put up a sound clip so the rest of us can hear it? - nothing fancy, just a scale or two.
Thx,
djm
Can you post soundfiles?
Any possibility of some pics as well?
Sound files and pics, we must have soundfiles and pics…
Terriffic breakthru…
I see you’re in Boca. I’m up that way from Miami a few times a week. I tried having a go at synthetic chanter reeds a few years back and never had the inclination to finish.
Link to previous discussion:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=1001&highlight=plastic&sid=0c9e2e33316c6a6d79db7fb5062a0c62
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=422610&sid=0c9e2e33316c6a6d79db7fb5062a0c62#422610
Perhaps we can chat.
I’ve done this one a few times, and aside from the plastic sound, it does pretty good. There are a few nuances about it that can be a little annoying, like when hitting the back D, it will sound a C# gloss note if you don’t adjust your bag pressure just right. If you make it right, it’s a fun little project.
REEPICHEEP, REEPICHEEP!!!
I made a yogurt lid reed as an exercise in learning to make reeds. Obviously you don’t learn much about working with cane and scraping, but you can figure out staple tieing and other stuff. Anyway, my chanter sounded like a single octave saxophone. Very interesting.
I’ll put up photos and sound clips as soon as I get out of the clink. They’ve got me in the psych wing of the hospital (involuntarily admitted). I’m still wondering about this REEPICHEEP. How can a rat develop wings? And how the hell did it fly to the moon and walk around on it. I mean, it really ain’t nothing but a light.