The Taylor Sound?

[Little Green Man]

Those are lovely sounds posted by Bill. However, to be fair to the Taylor "detractors", I was referring to the wide-bore "concert" sets rather than the narrow bore. And I can identify with the tales of blue tack and wire, having had several desperate attempts to get a Tayloresque chanter in tune with itself at modern concert pitch. Perhaps the A440 target was part of the problem? The chanter can be reeded satisfactorily down to about A444 but at A440 it sounds a bit raw. Overall, the sound of the chanter doesn't really inspire me to pick it up in preference to others.

[Evertjan 't Hart]

I believe it was you, Pat, who once described the sound of pipes as "a bandsaw going through a duck".
I don't think either phrase would describe this Taylor set:

In 1998 Tommy McCarthy was over for the Dutch Tionol and he did bring his Taylor chanter.
He was so kind to let me (and others) try it out and I was surprised how softly it was more like a flat chanter than concert pitch.
His Rowsome was twice as loud. There was a very small reed in it not at all what you would expect in a concert pitch chanter.
This was my first encounter with a Taylor before that I thought Taylors where like 'car horns', not from experience but hear say or something I read on a internet... The lesson for me was never believe anything you read on the internet before you've tried it out yourself...

Evertjan

[Evertjan 't Hart]

And I can identify with the tales of blue tack and wire, having had several desperate attempts to get a Tayloresque chanter in tune with itself at modern concert pitch.

This might be true but it doesn't mean always that the chanter is to blame. I had a Williams chanter send to me to reed and there was tape on every hole and a few guitar strings in the bore to get it down to 440. The reed was a mismatch and after fitting the chanter with a reed that was a match with the bore it was in tune, without tape or rushes. So be careful to discard a chanter as rubbish. Not that I really care for the Taylor sound but that's an other story.
Evertjan

[billh]

For those still interested, I've posted a
new soundfile of the Taylor, played by many different people, to my site. It's big - 15 MB, don't say I didn't warn you

Bear in mind that most of the people recorded were playing the set for the very first time, and in some cases the recording captures the first notes they played. Thus not everyone has settled in to the set, there are glitches... but the clip is interesting to me for several reasons. For one thing, the set sounds great and everyone manages to show off something different about it. It's also interesting to hear great players sounding "like themselves" while playing the same set, with the same reeds.

The clip features the playing of (in order):

Ronan Browne (playing before the reeds were balanced, so bass drone cuts out)
Cormac Cannon
Cormac with Breda Keville
Benedict Koehler
Mick O'Brien
Gay McKeon
Darragh O'Heiligh (oops, didn't ask Darragh yet )
Leo Rickard
Emmett Gill
(and a last few seconds of yours truly saying farewell to the set with some friends.)

enjoy (and if you listen more than once, please download to save my bandwidth!)

Bill

p.s. - I'm mostly off-the-air for the holidays, now

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Oh, that set. Does anybody work those 3rd octave keys? Lovely chanter, I got to take a close look at it when the owner needed a reed, but missed the chance to actually play it.

[PJ]

Hi Bill,

Very nice recording and thanks for posting it.

Did you do any work on that Taylor set? There are photos of it by Paul Reid on D'Arcy's website but here's one:



(I hope Paul doesn't mind me posting the photo here.)

Have you any up to date photos of the set?

[billh]

.. Thanks for posting it.

You're welcome... thanks to the players who consented to my posting it!

Did you do any work on that Taylor set?

A small bit - but very little work was needed!
I did make all the reeds.

Have you any up to date photos of the set?

It was photographed for NPU in 2008, so the photos will probably make an appearance on a calendar or such... but perhaps not too soon, since the Touhey/McKiernan Taylor was on the calendar only last year.

- Bill

[KAD]

Lovely, lovely stuff, Bill. Thanks for posting!

KAD

[Juan Pablo Plata]

Very good, Bill, thanks.