The discussion in the O’Meally thread picqued my curiousity.
I had the chance to (try and) play a couple of Alan MacDonald’s antique chanters some time back (a pastoral dating to around 1760 and a Union dating to around 1790). To my ears the sound they made was lovely and warm, even though I was scared to touch them in case I damaged them.
Decidedly a case of chanter avarice!!
What vintage chanters have the any of the board tried or played? and what did you like/dislike about them?.
David
My fave antique chanters are :
Willie Rowsome Chanter in C# currently owned by his great grandson. The finger spacing is perfect. I like the tonal quality and the playing pressure is just right.
Hennebry chanter in C#. Played magestically as reeded by Benedict Koehler. Had that old piping sound to my ear.
Double chanter in C# by unknown maker currently owned by one I will not mention. WoW! A little difficult to play at first but once you find the tone holes with a good set of reeds…its like two pipers piping! Had the most pleasant sound of the handful of double chanters I’ve heard.
I know two fellas I consider close friends who have Rowsome chanters that I particularly like the tonal quality of. I found both to be a little difficult to close at first while playing and there is a supposition that they were made for southpaws.
Define vintage. Does the chanter have to have a certain age before it’s considered vintage? Champagne is considered vintage if it’s older than 5 years. 
Champagne is also the beverage of choice for ‘wanny woos’. 
Hi PJ
Maybe I should have said old rather than vintage, but that was how the O’Mealy chanter was described, so I used that term. So for the purposes of the thread whay not define vintage as pre 1940.
David
No expert, here, but it seems to me that the reed has a lot to do with it. There’s a local fellow with a Rowsome D, and it’s had different reeds in it. I didn’t like its tone before, but with its present reed, I like it very much.
I’ve played a Coyne chanter. This chanter in question (owned by Jack Brennan) was supposedly one of the first few sets of Uilleann Pipes bought out to Australia. Jack could trace its origins back to about c.1920-30. Although not C# the chanter was pitched slightly flatter than D. It was easy to play and I could reach the upper octave D without much difficulty. It had a lovely mellow tone and sounded much like Seamus Ennis’s pipes.
Cheers L42B 
Que? Eugene Lambe’s about 50 now I think. Perhaps you mean Coyne, I know Craig Fischer has a Coyne “D”.
I’ve played three Taylor sets, a Hennelly or two (Sean F.'s pipes), two Patsy Browns, a Leo Rowsome CP, a Willie Rowsome Bb, a Coyne with Egan chanter, a J. Egan one regulator 18th century job, a McFadden. With most of these it was maybe 15 minutes of playing, they usually weren’t exactly going great either but you’d hear some unique, very attractive sounds sometimes.
One very memorable piping experience was playing Pat Sky’s Kenna B, which I recorded Pat’s playing of, too. “Filthy” describes the tone, very rich and varied from note to note. A beautiful sound, Geoff Wooff thinks the rich sound you hear in some of these old sticks is from centuries of peat fires and tobacco smoke. So chuck out your central heating and light up the old dudeen!
Nano’s right, a chanter is only as good as the reed that’s in it (at least for the purposes of evaluating it). And I think Kevin’s right, I don’t think “we” know enough about reedmaking as it was practiced before 1950 or so. Even today’s top makers are for the most part better at reeding their own stuff than old stuff (naturally enough), which may partly account for gorgeous old chanters going unplayed.
I was going to keep my mouth shut, but as I’m one of the people on this forum who keeps droning on about old sets I guess I should ante up and share some experiences.
I won’t count stuff that was dubiously readed, or that I haven’t had a chance to spend time with or reed myself, since I don’t think my experiences with those chanters is very meaningful. Since I don’t know what the respective owners think of having their names/instruments bandied about the Internet I won’t mention names.
My favorite chanter of all is a Coyne C# which plays like nothing else, light reed, extraordinary tone, easy octave. Everything you’d want in a chanter IOW. I think my second favorite is a Coyne C (16.5") which had similar character, possibly a little more restrained. The only fault I could find is a sharp off-the-knee E in the first octave on the 16.5", which might have been a problem with my reeds. Both of these chanters were made of the “mystery wood”, sometimes referred to as fruitwood (but I would not bet on that), and are likely c 1830-ish. The C# chanter is part of a 1-reg set that just purrs. The tone of those chanters has a lot of high-end harmonics, rich and bright at the same time.
I’ve ‘played’ (inverted commas here, since I am not much of a regulator player) some reg/drone combos without the original chanter, a set that’s possibly Kenna c 1790 in boxwood, lovely regs. My limited experience seems to go along with the sometimes-repeated notion that Harrington made the best regs of all.
I’ve also played an ebony Kenna B which was a really lovely stick, quite a bit of bite to the sound. That’s a very heavy chanter and it looks it too.
It probably requires a slightly more aggressive touch than, say, a Rogge plumwood B, but IMO it had a more pleasing tone, without the sort of quacking midrange quality you hear nowadays from some B sets. I’ve played a Kenna C as well but I have to say I couldn’t do it justice the way it was set up at the time I tried it; can’t say whether it was my fingers or the reed, as it is reportedly a lovely stick. The C Kenna drones were unquestionably gorgeous.
I’ve played a lovely Egan C chanter that was going very well; it might have been possible to get a brighter reed in it but I don’t know. The tone was very rich and pleasing, and any player would be very chuffed to play it, but I have to say it didn’t have the tonal brilliance of a Coyne or Kenna to my ear. However it had another advantage, which was that the off-the-knee and open fingerings were extraordinarily well in tune, so you basically had about four possibilities for each note, to choose from. I think that chanter could be amazing for air playing, because of the enormous amount of tone coloration you could add in that way, so if indeed there’s a tradeoff in harmonic content I think you could justify it. I’ve played an Egan C# that the jury is still out on I suppose, but it seems promising (it’s also been messed about with).
Except for that last entry, all the chanters I mentioned seem to have NOT been seriously messed with, and they are all lovely. Just about the only unmolested “historic/old/antique” chanter that I’ve not had a positive experience with is an anonymous double chanter that I just cannot figure out how to reed, so I take responsibility for that one. One other possible exception is a Kenna c1775 D set which I got to play for about 3 minutes, when I barely knew which end of the chanter to blow into , and I have doubts about the reed setup, so I am not sure that counts.
I’ve also played a Harrington B that seems to have survived the troubles it’s been subjected to, and I’d definitely rank that up with the Coynes for tone and playability. Possibly that’d be my #2 choice.
As for concert pitch, I’ve played a Willie Rowsome chanter which I think I’ve mentioned before, and it’s really lovely. I did try it without the rushes and extra-long ferrule, and it actually seemed in tune with itself and played quite nicely, about 50 cents sharp of A=440. So the drawbacks it exhibits in its current state (and those are IMO few) may be down to the problem of pitch. I’ve played one LR (c1930’s) with my own BK-derived reed and it’s really a fantastic stick, maybe a little overkill for my taste but head and shoulders above other CP sticks. I’d say that the LR and WR chanters are my favorite among all the concert pitch chanters I’ve played - I have to say I personally like the WR a bit better than the Alain Froment chanter the present owner is playing instead. The AF chanter’s tuning is better and its possibly a little easier to play, so I can certainly understand the choice, even though personally I think the WR’s tone might have a slight advantage over it. (This is with a Benedict Koehler reed, BTW).
I was surprised at how much I like the Leo stick, once I put a reed that suited me into it, since I didn’t think of myself as a Leo-R kind of guy. I’ve played one Taylor recently, it seemed to be hard going, but I didn’t get to try reeding it (reportedly a challenge!)
I hear great things about the Holy Order that PDarcy’s playing, but so far, I’ve never played a recent stick that I liked as much as the WR and LR.
regards
Bill
I haven’t played it either, but it was certainly a joy to listen to The Miliner’s Daughter (as played by the Padre hisself) in class at the GNIPC Tionol last May! That set is everything it is cracked up to be and then some IMHO!
Great reply, Bill! I’m printing that out, one for the archives.
Man have I played some old chanters and even old chanter copies… they all had their charms…like those girlfriends you can’t forget!
I like the Pastoral “time machine” I’ve been playing for 2 years now, and I love my old Tayloresque D set, the sound of which is now… MY SOUND.
Some of the old chanters are BUNK and can’t be reeded for any consideration and are(trying to remember this exactly) "a burden on the pipers of future generations, and ought be burnt, so as to not trouble them"a quote from Gilbert Askew’s Northumbrian Small Pipe Handbook (circa 1936). Well you shouldn’t burn the chanter(s) till you’ve tried several makers and got their opinions and attempts to reed these same chanters. I have two old imperfect American chanters that do not play well very well in tune (the magic reed awaits?). I do like the tone, and they are HISTORIC so why get rid of them? In the 1930s alot of “old” chanters were re-reamed with larger bores, in order to get them up to
“concert” pitch (A=452 in 1930s Ireland). This reaming ruined the chanters, of course, who knows how many chanters bit the dust in that time, due to the lack of pipemakers. We just now, live in a time where the UP makers are understanding the principles, the stuff of family-style “heritage” instrument making with generations of experience. Without the family of friends… people of likeminded affinity, all this can be lost again. Sharing the info has to be the order of the day! Love those OLD CHANTERS Sean
I play flute but ive been learning the pipes off and on for the past couple of years, i have a full set of taylor brothers pipes, i practice on the chanter for now with a different bag which a friend loaned me, the keyed chanter is extreemly loud even with little air pressure and i think this is a result of the reed which is i believe the original, when i got the pipes from the grandaughter of the previous owner, she told me they wer’nt played since 1906,
glinjack:
If you really have what may be an original Taylor reed in good working order, you have something even more rare and precious than the chanter. You should have an expert reed and pipemaker with a long pedigree (like DMQuinn or Benedict K) carefully examine and document it. (There aren’t that many people that I’d trust such a reed to).
Good knowledge of original reeds is IMO the most important piece of lost knowledge to be recovered of all.
Bill
I second this opinion. That reed ought to be examined by BK and DQ. I am also thinking that if the chanter reed is possibly original, then there’s a good chance that the rest of the reeds may be too. A veritable gold mine of knowledge.
Hi John,
Did you ever get around to taking a few snaps of the Taylor set. We’d all love to see some images of the set. From what I recall you have one of the few complete sets. You should also email Thomas Johnson who keeps a website dedicated to the Taylor bros and other noted makers:
http://web.telia.com/~u46103557/taylor.html
His site mentions that there are only 29 known full Taylor set. I don’t know if he knows about yours.
thank you Billh, and Joseph E Smith, i will be sending the pipes to Benedict K shortly for a check–up of drones and regulators etc as some of these reeds are absent, i will let you know what he says about the chanter reed.
That is very cool! I look forward to an update about this. I have an obssession regarding Taylor pipes.
Is this the chanter that David Quinn gives measurements for on his Pipes and Pipemaking CDRom?
If it is, has anyone heard a chanter based on those measurements?
Thanks
David
You are not alone, mon frere.