Tuning individual reed blades

Uilleann Pipes
1

I have two reeds for my chanter ,both made by Alan Ginsberg they are identical in every way except that one plays like a dream and the other doesn,t play at all ,it,s totally muffelled in tone and completely out of tune and you can,t get the upper octave at all ,but the only way I can tell them apart is by sticking them in the chanter and playing them .
The only difference must be in the cane or the scraping of the cane

But Here,s a thought that some of you reedmaker,s might have some say on .! A chanter reed being a double reed means that two individual cane blades are set against each other and are meant to move back and forth ,momentarily meeting in the middle to set up the vibrations and produce a tone ! .But what if one of the blades is trying to move at a slightly different rate than the other and is in some way cancelling out some of the important vibrations that make up the tone needed for it to play properly in the chanter .
Could this be the reason my dud reed won,t play ? and how do I cure it ?


How about if you could somehow test each blade separately ,as a single reed similar to that in a clarinet and getting each reed to play the same pitch indicating that the reeds are playing at the same rate and then reassembling .

All very problematic and hard to prove ,but there you go !


RORY

2

identical except in one way: the muffled one probably has a defective interior shaping, or the lips could be squished together by the bridle in an unsavory way. I say defective interior shaping because the edges of the reed should not be flat against each other thus -<>- , but rather kind of touching each other right on the very edges thus <=> . I would say send it back to Ginsberg if he has some kind of warranty on his reeds (I know some makers allow for a small window of time to replace the reed if defective upon shipment).

3

I’ve enough difficulty with getting a regular reed to sound.

What you’re proposing would fundementally change the sound of the reed as it would no longer be a split or double reed but a single reed, like a sax. Can it even be done with uilleann pipes?