pakistani rebuild related stuff

[Antaine]

This was submitted to An Píobaire for publication, but has not been picked up nor rejected yet. An issue has been mailed since then, so I'm assuming they don't want it.

In all, it is favorable, but honest about the set's shortcomings and how to fix them.




Buntús Uilleann
Inexpensive Full Sets For Beginners or Spares
Antaine Ó hÓgáin

One of the things that discourages prospective uilleann pipers from picking up the instrument is the lack of an inexpensive and reliable full set without a years-long wait list.

US pipemaker Tim Britton has developed a product that may offer a solution. I purchased one of these sets two years ago and have spent time getting it up to snuff. This can be a workable option for a decent full set at a reasonable price and wait if one is willing to do a little extra work.

Mr. Britton, in addition to producing high quality sets of his own making, rebuilds sets made in Pakistan. The price of a full set is currently $2600 (about €1910) and states a waiting list of one month. When I placed my order two years ago the price was the same, but the wait was closer to four months. Regardless, I waited a fraction of the time I was quoted for other sets priced 2-3 times higher.

The set itself is of blackwood and brass, with a stitched, suede leather bag and a three-keyed chanter. It appears to be patterned after a set by Kirk Lynch. Judging by the evidence of Mr. Britton's alterations it would be entirely unplayable without the rebuilding.

I found the chanter to be the most disappointing component of the set. Mr. Britton had to fill and redrill almost every one of the tone holes, and made for it a new reed. My displeasure with it does not have anything to do with its basic functioning, indeed it played in tune reliably in both octaves, but uses a shorter, unbridled reed that produces a somewhat harsher sound than my long-reeded chanter from Bruce Childress, to which I have always been partial. The joints for the original chanter and all the rest of the set is shored up with thread, which I prefer to cork. Almost every joint required more thread in order to get it airtight, but that was fairly simple, and any cotton thread from a sewing machine can be used if the proper binding cannot be found.

The bag is of good quality with a suede finish that has been glued and stitched. The tie-ins for the bellows, mainstock and chanter are well done, although I don't know whether or not they are the doing of the original maker or Mr. Britton. Two years of relatively heavy use have yielded no leaks or other discernible problems.

The bellows uses a suede-covered plastic tube to connect to be bag, allowing the length to be customized after-market. The wood used on the bellows is attractive and strong, and the leather material is the same as the bag itself. The straps on the bellows were another story, however. The leather was of low quality and uncomfortable, the buckles were light and the screws were short. I replaced both straps with inexpensive padded leather belts made for pants and longer screws. This solved all the above problems and looked nice as well. The only other complaint that could be made with regards to the bellows is the strips of blue plastic under the brass tacks used to make a seal. I made a simple cosmetic alteration to these by gluing a strip of paper with a celtic knot pattern and holes for the tacks over it.

The drones are beautiful. The bass drone is a hook style instead of Taylor or H style without a soundbox. The reeds are traditional all-cane and are remarkably stable. I did add a small glob of blutak to each reed tongue and stability through octaves and varying humidity became even better. The rosewood mainstock includes an easily accessible drone shut-off switch.

The regulators are a bit trickier. It is good to have them prior to being ready to start using them. In this way, proper posture with respect to the keys can always be used. When the beginner begins to use them, he tends not to use them heavily, and so these are well suited. They did, however, require the most extensive modification on my part. To begin, the plate securing the bass regulator to the mainstock was of slightly different curvature than the mainstock and therefore had a small gap. Filling the gap and tightening the screws solved this problem completely.

The keys joints were a little loose, and the cut of the keys did not easily facilitate sliding although many other higher quality pipes use the same key style. The pads on the keys were good, for the most part, and just a little tweaking to the springs tightened the contact between the pad and the hole, eliminating any leaks. I had to identify what eventually became four pads with leaks, three minor, one major. I fixed this by replacing the pads, not with other pads that wouldn't sit properly on the hole, but with unbaked sculpey clay, covered with a little circle of saran wrap so that they would stick to the pan in the key, but not to the hole. completely airtight and has been working like a dream for a long time. I used the same method to repad a trumpet spit valve many years ago.

The regulators were in major need of tuning, which I found exceedingly difficult using the tuning pins and traditional method. The reeds are plastic, but do not sound bad in the regs. I found that a combination of trimming or filing the plastic and using clear tape to partially obscure tone holes provided the easiest, most reliable and most cosmetically acceptable approaches. The benefit of having plastic regulator reeds is their durability and stability. Once the regulators are tuned, they will remain so. Preparation for playing requires only tuning the drones to the chanter.

In all, Mr. Britton's rebuilt full set is an exceptional value for the money and wait, particularly suitable for the beginning piper's first set or an experienced piper's "travel" set. This could be the first step towards a commercially available "mass produced" set accessible to those without the time or money to spend on a custom or used full set from an established maker's own design.

[Cayden]

Would it be possible for you record a few clips of you playing the set so we can actually hear them for ourselves. I think that will be more enlightening than reading about it.

[Joseph E. Smith]

Would it be possible for you record a few clips of you playing the set so we can actually hear them for ourselves. I think that will be more enlightening than reading about it.

I second the motion.

[Antaine]

I played this past week in a concert that was recorded. I had several solos backed by orchestra - that will allow you to hear the childress chanter. but I begin with a cadenza using chanter, drones and regs all...as soon as i get my own copy, I will be happy to post an mp3 to clips and snips or something and you guys'll be the first to know.

[Wjndbag]

Thanks for this thread. While my Addison set were away being mended I got lonely and had a bit of money, and I bought by mail a Pakistani sold on the Web. They arrived absolutely terrible and still are, despite my best efforts. Do you think having them remanufactured is an option, and do you have this good man's email address please?

Love to yourself and a tune to your chanter

Patrick

[Cayden]

I am not really interested in the sound of your childress chanter in front of an orchestra. As you are writing about your refurbished thing it's obvious that's the sound we'd like to hear, just as a back up to your writing, words are cheap afterall. All it takes is sitting infront of your computer and put down a tune. What will that take, ten minutes? Don't worry about the quality of the recording all that is needed is an impression of it's overall balance, tone and tuning. You have described yourself as a pretty decent player often enough, how hard can it be?

[Tony]

....Do you think having them remanufactured is an option, and do you have this good man's email address please?

Love to yourself and a tune to your chanter

Patrick

Patrick, click this link for Tim's website:
http://www.skep.com/britton/

[Antaine]

I am not really interested in the sound of your childress chanter in front of an orchestra. As you are writing about your refurbished thing it's obvious that's the sound we'd like to hear, just as a back up to your writing, words are cheap afterall. All it takes is sitting infront of your computer and put down a tune. What will that take, ten minutes? Don't worry about the quality of the recording all that is needed is an impression of it's overall balance, tone and tuning. You have described yourself as a pretty decent player often enough, how hard can it be?

no prob, if quality don't matter. i'll do it later this afternoon...

[Davey]

...I don't think Tim is offering these rebuilts anymore....


Tim??

[Antaine]

alright. you wanted lo-tech? now, I did 19 takes, continually getting farther and farther from the computer - it sounded terrible the closer I was. the funky bend a the end is the result of me starting to get up before I was actually done, to turn off the recorder. I had to use my laptops internal mic and the freeware mp3 maker "audio recorder" - it's all I got...so...

I used bruce's chanter, so those of you acquainted with how mellow those typically are, can mentally adjust the quality of the rest of the recording accordingly.

I haven't had lessons, and I've had a hard time getting recordings involving use of the regs. Mainly I've just had the NPU vol 3 tape. I don't use them much, mostly in the manner you hear them here to spice up slow/stately tunes such as Boolavogue, or just to liven up the final framata'd note. I'd be interested to know how those of you more experienced would do this differently. I'd normally not use them as much as you hear here, but I was trying to give an example.

When I get the mp3 of my cadenza (unaccompanied, utilizing chanter, drones and regs, and made up on the spot) I'll post it here, too...hopefully the quality and acoustics will be better.

<a href="http://members.aol.com/irairbica/test.mp3">recording here</a>

[Cayden]

Thanks for doing that but I am afraid what I somehow expected was confirmed: that is not a working set of pipes Antaine. Nothing seems to be in tune with either it self or anything else or balanced for sound or pressure. Sorry to say it but if you think this is the way to go for bringing pipes to the masses, you should really reconsider the plan.

[Antaine]

oh, I know it sounded like sh*t. like I said, this is an exceedingly poor representation of what it sounds like in person. the chanter you heard is not the rebuild, but an honest-to-goodness 'real' chanter. That's why I wanted to wait for the professional recording before posting.

the problem is that its so distorted. what do you guys use to record onto your computers for C&S and whatnot? I know my brother uses a minidisc burner with some hotdang microphone. I'm trying to record into a tiny mic built into a speaker from thirty feet away using software with no controls other than 'record' and 'stop'

the problems i get with it are similar to the ones you experience with those tiny tape recorders. only good for simple voice etc. i've tried recording the gaeilge singing workshops with them and got similar results...the singer sounded fine in person, sounded 'out of tune' on the tape

you know what "midnight walker" sounds like, right? this is what the same recording method does to it. now it started off from the original cd, same distance from the mic as I was playing.

<a href="http://members.aol.com/irairbica/davy.mp3">point is, it messes with what it takes in, and bugs the heck out of me. it seems to take what's above a certain frequency and flatten it, and what's below a certain frequency and sharpen it, throwing everything out of whack.</a>

the only thing i changed while it was recording was to turn down the stereo a bit, which you'll hear.

aside from the obvious "get better recording equipment", what specifically would i need to make a better recording?

[Antaine]

grrrrr....i did find a setting that allowed me to record an .aiff instead of an .mp3. but it's 6.6mb for 30 seconds. I only get 2mb with my aol.

part of the reg issue is dumbarse me taking my bottom hand off the chanter to hit the keys...anybody know who'll give me about 10 megs of space for free to host a stupid scale?

sigh.

I'll try to record something shorter to just illustrate the tune of the chanter to itself and the drones. then maybe I can email the file directly to who wants it? maybe? hotmail gives 25mb of storage to start and then 250 for free, so...let me know if any of you actually care that much or if I'm knocking myself out for nothing...

i'm off to dinner

[Brian Lee]

I do all my recording on a $5 Labtec AM-242 mic that I got at Target on clearance. I use Goldwave to record and have some old Cakewalk program that is sometimes useful for cleaning up hiss and certain effects.

I'm no Ennis, or the like, but I think the recording quality is decent enough to represent a set, chanter or reed fairly well. The file is saves as Windows Media as it gives greater tone and compression than .mp3. I know I'll catch hell from Peter for adding a synth drone, but for us poor starving doctor techs out here, it'll have to do till the real things arrive!

Have a listen.

The reed is mine, in a Seth Gallagher D chanter. Not perfectly in tune just yet...just give me a few years more would ya?! Anyway, the point of all this is that you should be able to get a reasonably decent recording out of some pretty cheap (read: mostly free) equipment. No hot processers, or fancy effects...just play into the mic. We have a page up that details some of this proces if you're interested in checking it out. This might help your recording quality some....but perhaps not. Feel free to try any of it though: http://www.uilleann.org/Music-Tune-Posting.html

[Joseph E. Smith]

So Royce, tell us, what do you really think?