Okay, so my pipemaker lives in the same country as I do, and roughly the same climate (although closer to large bodies of water); my reed has been steady, well-seated and nicely tuned; and the chanter, while a prototype until the half-set’s finished being built, more than satisfying to me.
The reed has begun to buzz recently (four to five months) and I’ve liked the sound of it, but I picked up the set two days ago and the buzz was nearly louder than the notes of my warmup. Scared the crap out of me, actually.
I checked the reed and the bridle had slid down quite a bit. I moved it back and it slid again, within about five or six notes. I read somewhere on this forum about Liam O’Flynn tying a string around the base of his bridle to keep it from slipping, so I tried that. It’s keeping the reed in place, and the buzz is still there. Not as loud, closer to where it was before, but it’s still an odd and abrupt change.
It’s been getting colder and drier here, slowly for Manitoba, so I don’t know why the reed seems to have shrunk so abruptly. I took a magnifying glass and looked at the reed under bright light to see if it was cracked, and then tried gently squeezing the bridle at the reed’s edges. That steadied the tone, which had changed with sudden and inexplicable onrush of the buzzing, but I still have no idea what’s going on.
Uh, so like… what do I do now?
Hoping for easy-to-use advice (and perhaps an emu, but nothing special, you know just a little one, so it’ll fit in the car),
Yeah, you’re just holding up a loose bridle that’s vibrating around on the reed. You have to tighten the bridle up so it doesn’t vibrate–either pinching it tighter in a way that holds open the reed more, and then sliding it down a bit so it doesn’t but still stays tight, or by pinching it shut more and sliding it up so it holds the reed open more anyway. Either way tightens the fit of the bridle but you’ll have to decide if the reed needs to be more open or more closed, the bridle more up or more down to end up with the fit you need with the bridle in the best spot. Yes, there is a best spot for the bridle to sit within a fairly narrow margin of movement.
Sorry, Mark, no emus to hand. Would you settle for just being goosed?
One of the first things you should do with a working reed is trace a pencil line around the bridle at its working position. It really makes a difference to have this point of reference as climate conditions change and you need to move the bridle about.
Get your bridle into approx the right position as best you can. Take a very small pair of needle-nosed pliers and pinch the bends in the bridle tighter, so that it doesn’t move about, but not so much that you crack the reed. You just want to make it stay still, and only move when you move it by hand.
One of the things you really want to learn on your reed is how wide the lips of the reed should be by sight. Then when conditions change you will have an idea of where you want to get to when you need to adjust the bridle.
Taping or tying the bridle into position is really only an option for people in stable climates. The fact that your reed has shrunk so much that the bridle has come loose should tell you that this is not a good option for an untreated reed. I hate to say it, but I have also found that different reeds seem to behave according to the climate they were made in, so that a summer reed doesn’t play well in winter and vice versa.
The solution - learn to make your own reeds. Then you can experiment with treating the reed with oil - neatsfoot, almond, light mineral oil, etc. - to see if this saves your reeds in winter. You need to have lots of reeds handy to be able to afford to experiment without leaving yourself high and dry. Some people find they can afford to tie or tape the bridle once it has been treated and become somewhat impervious to the dryness.
Upper Michigan is cold and DRY, too. I have found that in order to make reeds work real well that taking them to New Orleans for a week or so every couple of months helps. The humidity and warm temps help the reeds and a couple of bowls of Gumbo from Coops’s Place on Decator warm up the piper! Try that and see if Manitoba still looks as good when you get back.
I agree with you, DJM. Cruel. I can barely afford to think about New Orleans.
My reed has my initials on it, and I’ve been using the ‘m’ as a guide for where I should put the bridle. I think I broke my last reed (by another maker) by pissing about with it too much. I’ve been trying not to do that.
I’ve thought about making my own reeds, but I just don’t have the time for the learning curve right now. I love tinkering with fiddly little bits of things, but it’s not in the picture for the next little while.
I’m going to try squeezing gently on the bridle again. I was afraid of overtightening it and breaking the reed. But I’ll try again with a bit more uh… delicate force.
Islandpiper, I’ll tell you what. You float the tickets, and I’ll happily join you in New Orleans. Heck, I bet DJM’d come along, if you asked him. He could bring the geese.
