Has anyone had any luck with a different style of reed in Tims chanters. Instead of the short bridleless ones… Thanks
Tim’s reeds are brillent, but I would not sugest sending your pipes to him as he has a nasty habit of never getting around to doing the job for you. Not to give him a bad name, but he is not exactually punctual about sending stuff back, he just forgets about it.
I’m curious as to why you would want to use a different style.
Steve
He’s always been more than prompt with my stuff and very pleasant to deal with, to boot.
nick whitmer could help with your reeds , nick learn to make pipes from tim,and think he makes same style reeds for his stuff.
My latest pipemaking reamer, came from Tim… Im having trouble making his style reeds work, It might be the cane Im using???
At our last tionol I watched Benedict Koehler make a reed for a Tim Britton chanter. He said that he has only had luck reeding Tim’s chanters by reeding them Tim’s way.
Benedict went ahead and tried his regular method, just to see if it would work this time, but it did not (at least not up to his expectations). So he tried again with the Tim Britton method and it worked.
I guess I have some work to do
Yeah, it takes a while to get it down. Personally, I perfer the flexibility that using bridles allows. You could make use of installing a bridle with Tim’s style reed… it may make it easier on you. Practice, practice, practice… ![]()
yea I talked to Patrick Sky through email this morning and he said the same thing… Try a bridle on the Britton reeds…
I’ve had success with Tim’s style of reed using two methods:
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order a reed from Tim! Not cheap, but not the most expensive reed I’ve heard of. He sent me a new chanter reed after a phone conversation, payment and reed might have crossed in the mail, I got it that fast. Popped it in and played “Off She Goes.”
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make about a hundred reeds using Tim’s book “My Method.” I will report that I’ve had better success lately by changing the recommended dimensions very slightly; a wee bit longer helps with the second octave E overtones, and about one mm narrower than his recommended width.
I’ve had more than one piper and pipemaker tell me they didn’t think I could get a hard bottom D out of my Britton chanter, and not every reed will do it, but one of my recent efforts gave a very nice hard D (but not so nice on balance or tuning overall).
JVF
Ive been using the David Daye dimentions, and I made some adjustments to Tims plans widdening the bore and moving all the tone holes a little higher on the chanter… but I want to start making my chanters directly from his measurements, so Im going to have to make that style reed. Ive only tried it a few times, Ill have to keep at it…
Tim has always been very friendly and most helpful to me when I need help making reeds for my Britton set.
I have always found dealing with Mr. Britton pleasant and entertaining. Nice guy that Tim fella is.
And very knowledgable - has posted some interesting information from time-to-time on this very forum.
Cheers,
DavidG