Oh, I'm mostly received wisdom, first to admit it. I just find this all A Fascinating Hobby, like the man said. The main thing with these old flat sets is that at their best they just sound fantastic, I'd like more of that in concert pitch + wide bore stuff.
I'd figure if anybody had played a wide selection of Egans it'd be you, Geoff. Interesting that the bit about a decibel or two more coming out of them, in theory anyway, isn't really the case. Maybe Ken McLeod suggested that somewhere? Among other grand notions I think it'd be really worthwhile to accurately document these old pipes in detail, that would be money well spent eh, government grants and so on. Maybe NPU have managed to do that a bit. I see the plans available on their website.
Leo post-war sounded great, too, listen to his
1966 EP. Very warm chanter tone, working nigh unto perfectly too. People who had the honor of playing his pipes tell me they fairly played themselves. Willie's moving away from the Taylor type Blast-O-Matic regulators was the way to go, too.
We've all heard Leo's chanters struggling to play in A=440 though, Willie Clancy's snarling high E and motorboat hard D. Or was that the Taylor? Probably the same solution to either maker's stuff, play it in Eb. The alternative is to make these canoe paddle reeds that take a fearful squeezing to make work. Where the warm sound in his chanters comes from I'd guess would be a well polished bore, he kept those bayonets he used as reamers good and sharp, and voicing the toneholes. Voicing is critical. If you're making a Swedish bagpipe go ahead and used a hot fireplace poker for boring, that's part of that sound, but with Irish pipes you need to do it right. I have a collection of old simple system flutes and even the unplayable out of tune no name piccolos have signs of the holes being voiced. People in the old days understood the value of this, to smooth out the sound. But modern pipemakers persist in just slapping on a template and drilling and calling it good, which is why so many of their chanters bray away. That, and all the African blackwood, which isn't as warm sounding as ebony.
Brad Angus told me how even the bellows inlet can be voiced. You get smoother whiffs of air.
Never liked the Rowsomes' drones, they missed the boat somewhere, I always preferred what the Taylors did. Another bit of interesting received wisdom was how most of the old flat makers' drones had a slight conical profile throughout the bore, but Egan's were a titch more cylindrical, the start of the bore was a bit larger and didn't grow quite so much, thus a slightly smoother sound. I wonder if Willie Rowsome started with an Egan set and enlarged the proportions, using a Taylor chanter as a role model, they say. Certainly Willie like Egan's regulator keys, and the old pipers seemed to think Egan was the cream of the crop.
Haven't thought about those metric sizes in a while. I think 16 would be gaita time, perhaps?
