When to use a wire rush?

[Donald E Baltus]

A rush can:-

Pitch your chanter

Tune your chanter

Tone your chanter

It is not readily visible.

It is not a permanent alteration to your chanter or reed.

As Kurt Cobain said ' Mmmmm the rush'

There.......


(sorry Kurt)

Tommy is of course an UP God but I have to agree with Mr B. here. It may be that the new maker with the new chanter and the new reed has a perfectly brilliant setup except that this particular reed in this particular chanter is a hair sharp or flat either overall in both octaves or in one or the other octave. The bottom line as we say in America, meaning the point at which you have to cough up the big bucks for a particular enterprise, is the outcome. I suppose the maker could fish around for another reed that comes exactly in concert pitch exactly in both octaves, or throw the chanter away, but in reality, some pretty fooked up chanters sound gooddamned incredible over even their "perfect" line-production brothers and sisters either with just the right reed, or with just a brilliant reed with one small quirk fixed by a wire. You listen to and play a chanter and it's a done-deal by that time, so if it sounds and plays great except for some minor intonation problem, you don't in fact toss it in the bin or winge about how it has to have this or that bit of crap loaded into the bore to achieve the perfect result. The result is the result, and nobody in reality should give much of a damn about how it is achieved if it is achieved.

The secret, evil truth is that some really great players are basically out of tune most of the time slightly at least and it doesn't bother them. If it did, they too would be grabbing for the bits of wire and bent matchsticks and rolled up playing cards. So in fact many of those arguing for the unadulterated bore simply crank the chanter in tune on each note as best they can and if it's close enough, within five or even ten cents that's considered a "perfect" chanter because it can be wrangled into tune without any internal helpers. Others just fix a few of the worst reed or design quirks without any deleterious side-effects at all by inserting a bit of this or that and achieve, with the same reed and chanter, intontation within a few cents of perfect pitch with half the effort.

So, if it really bothers you, take out the rush and reed and start dicking around looking for the "perfect" reed for that chanter that doesn't need a rush or a waxed or taped hole and let us know when you find it. And of course, get used to thinking of each individual note as a three part exercise of sounding, blowing in, and sustaining the correct pitch. Or just embrace a fooking rush and a bit of tape or wax in a hole and play your arse off with only a fraction of that effort in the meantime over the course of some score or two of years in perfect tune with great intonation until you find that perfect reed for that particular chanter.

[anima]

Nicely put Herr Baltus, I can't agree more. This whole thread has been pissing me off.

[Tony]

.....what's the point of making an instrument you don't like the sound of so you have to stuff things up the bore to muffle it down?

Seriously?
I don't know. Perhaps the end result is: An in-tune, easy to play, good sounding chanter?

No chanters I've owned came with wire. The possible exception was a Mackenzie chanter I sent to Kirk Lynch for reeding. It came back with 2 good playing reeds and thick wire in the bore. I tried it for a while and went back to the Mackenzie reed without the wire.

The best reed I tried was made by Seth Gallagher. It was his standard reed (I accepted the disclaimer) made for his chanters. It was plugged it into a Childress chanter. Yeah, it needed tape and wire, but it played very well. I played that same reed in a Makenzie chanter and loved it's performance. It needed a small wire in the staple to cure an octave problem. But I was delighted with it's playability.

So... we're back to the level of acceptability.

If you get a new chanter from a reputable maker and it sounds great, plays well and tunes well... but there's a wire up the bore.
Is is to be considered a design defect?
Is it inherent to (that makers) design and not a defect?

[Uilliam]

Why not say the same about regulators then , nobody seems upset by the fact that they all have a tuning rush and that they cannot function properly without one ?

Why don't people understand that it is the same with a chanter , it is nothing more than a regulator with open holes instead of keys , and cannot work without one ?

A rush is the solution to all these problems , and old makers of the past knew it well .

So why not accept the fact that a uilleann-pipe chanter is designed to function with a rush , like regulators ( once again remember that makers of the past always used them ) ,"

What a load o twaddle.Regulators on the early sets didnae have rushes up the bore.The Hussey and Kenna sets I have seen didnae have them.(and they played perfectly well)I have said before and I will say it again I think the rushes were added to fix a design problem on the regs and became standard since.Much like three regs have become the norm when once it was perfectly normal for only one or two regulators.I have seen a small regulator made by a living maker and that does not have rushes and plays perfectly in tune.I have also seen plenty of chanters that are not rushed and play in tune.Ye do not need rushes if ye do it properly.So don't go and make such sweeping statements .Especially when it is not true.
Slán Agat
Uilliam

[Joseph E. Smith]

Nicely put Herr Baltus, I can't agree more. This whole thread has been pissing me off.

I agree with your agreement, but I'm not pissed off, just bored of it. There are sound points on both sides of this discussion. This debate can (and most likely will) continue until most folk are blue in the face, but this fact will always be the same: "... what good is any chanter (with or without a rush), if you never play it becuase you continually debate such matters instead of practicing?"

Ah well.

[molduche]

Thank you Uilliam for the " load of twaddle " , what does our webmaster think of this excess of " courtoisie " as we say in French ? Apparently you seem to be an expert , but all I would like to say is that " ye dae need rushes if ye want the full set to work properly " I have been playing the pipes for more than 30years now , and it's only in the past ten years that I have discovered that rushes were the solution to all the tuning problems . And both my sets of pipes are spot on , both my Williams and my Froment set , and if I remove all the rushes , it is a disaster , whatever reeds I use , unless you consider D.Williams and A.Froment as bad makers !
Now one point , I have never said that you should play with a muffled sound, but on the other hand , play with screamers is not a solution .
So , rush or no rush , this is beginning to piss me off as well , I'll go back to my pipes which are going so well ( with loads of rushes ) that it is just a dream !
Agreiz kalon.
Molduche

[Tony]

Do I hear talk of a lockdown?

[Joseph E. Smith]

C'mon people, it is really a stupid thing to get all surly over. Surely we are all adult enough here to discuss these things without temper tantrums, eh?

[Dionys]

Just to warm the subject up again, it's possible that newly made chanters that come with a rush up the bore are newly made chanters based on an older chanter design that has a rush. I've seen and played a couple of Leo's chanters with spaghetti-plus sized metal rushes in the bore that the owners have said are original. They certainly have the look of age about them and I'm not going to call the owners liars.

They played beautifully, with the harmonic tones and loudness you expect of a L.R. It's possible that they came from Leo's hands without the rush and were therefore of a different pitch than ~440(2), but perhaps someone wanted a chanter copy made that is historically accurate to the sound of the one with the large 'rush.'

I tend to agree that if you're going to design your own bore that you should be doing so without the need to rush, but why put down an instrument that has a rush if the owner feels it plays better or sounds better. The point is to have a great chanter that plays as best it can with the best tone/timbre it can in tune. Unfortunately everyone has different ideas as to what makes something better to play or which is the best timbre.

Dionys

[Tony]

Dionys, good Post.
Let's not forget... what your ear is hearing (as the piper) is COMPLETELY different 10 feet away (as the audience) especially if there are room acoustics involved.

[anima]

look, the bore is only as good as the reed stuck in it and anyone who's ever made reeds can tell you it's all a bit luck mixed with skill. Two reeds made from the same piece of cane at the same time, under the same conditions can sound and act completely different from each other. Rushes are the compensation we are forced to use to deal with the inadequacy of the real variable in the situation - the reed.

[Uilliam]

Nobody is getting surly shurly :boggle:I hope
Mulduche wrote innacurately ,wildly so in my opine...stuff like

"Why not say the same about regulators then , nobody seems upset by the fact that they all have a tuning rush and that they cannot function properly without one ? "...

"Why don't people understand that it is the same with a chanter , it is nothing more than a regulator with open holes instead of keys , and cannot work without one ? ".....

"A rush is the solution to all these problems , and old makers of the past knew it well . "....

"So why not accept the fact that a uilleann-pipe chanter is designed to function with a rush , like regulators ( once again remember that makers of the past always used them ) ," ".......etc etc

Far from me extending courtesies to our Gallic friend methinks tis he that is being discourteous to this forum by misinforming us in such a manner as to assure us that his misconception of things was always so and thus we are idiots not to accept it..
Well like I said previously, Hussey and Kenna did not need nor use Tuning Pins or rushes on their regulators.So they can function perfectly well without them.
Why should we accept that the chanter is designed to function with a rush like the regulators??I say non ...apart frae muldouche who else says that this is the design concept??Hussey and Kenna certainly didnae seem to.
Why should this thread be locked?? nobody is breaching policy...
Quite the opposite I would say, and nobody to my knowledge has said that any maker thus far mentioned are bad makers.
If ye are happy with the sound then fine thats what ye are after all said and done.
But don't go around with some sort of revisionist theory about the basic design of the pipes always being like this or that just because one or two makers have rushed chanters to bring them into tune or because regulators apparently must have tuning pins when they don't.
Twaddle is an 18thC word which Hussey or Kenna would have recognised immediately and means to talk or write in a trivial or foolish way.I say Hussey or Kenna would have recognised it for if ye were to compare your statement of fact with their sets they would have disclaimed no doubt "what twaddle.."
I don't think our moderator need lose any sleep over the use of the term no more than I will..I do however think that your efforts to mimic moi wi
" ye dae need rushes if ye want the full set to work properly " is an old chestnut wi some o ye and could be seen to be a breach of the forum policies if I were to be so pedantic and claim it was ye taking the piss out o me.Which I am sure is your intent.Enough of this ,just to redress the balance Regulators and Chanters do not necessarily need tuning pins or rushes.simple really.
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam

[Joseph E. Smith]

With respect to all concerned, it is not so much the terms or language, but the spirit seemingly behind them.

There is no need, or use, for getting all hot under the collar or all kinds of weepy over this issue. If there needs to be harsh words or cyber blows to the groin, please do so in PM.


That is all.

[Uilliam]

There is no need, or use, for getting all hot under the collar or all kinds of weepy over this issue.

That is all.

Gee Joseph we are sorry
Truly so
slán Go Foill
Uilliam

[Joseph E. Smith]

That's better.