Hello Sam, The short answer is no, it should not take more pressure to play the high A and B notes. Nor should you have to resort to carving the notes.
The first thing to alter is how far the reed is pushed into the chanter. Pushing the reed further into the chanter seat will sharpen the high A and B. If necessary, unwind a couple of threads of binding from around the bottom of the reed to allow you to do this. 1 mm will make a big difference and this on its own should cure the problem. If you can't get the reed far enough into the chanter, you can file down the reed staple fractionally to allow the reed to fit deeper into the chanter seat (some makers produce chanters with a very shallow reed seat). If this fails to give the required results, you can play with the cotton plunger in the base of the chanter. The position of the cotton may have flattened the upper notes. Experimenting with the cotton plunger at various depths may correct the top notes. The use of the cotton plunger is really to correct false notes, so before messing about with it note its current position so that you can always put it back the way you found it. If you have a Burleigh chanter and you find that the sole plate has been glued in place, simply dip the end of the chanter into warm water for a few seconds to soften the glue. This will allow you to remove the chanter sole and give access to the cotton plunger. A simple way of experimenting with the depth of cotton plunger (because this is a bit of a trial and error sort of thing) is to use a Q-Tip. Pull out the old cotton plunger and push a Q-Tip a short way into the base of the chanter. Through trial and error, you can establish what is the correct depth and then simply cut off the unused section of the Q-tip and replace the sole. Don't reglue the sole plate, simply add a turn or two of cotton thread to the base of the chanter so that the plate is a comfortable push fit. Hopefully, you will not have to bother with the cotton plunger, simply pushing the reed further into the chanter should cure the problem. Hope this helps, Richard Sam Edwards wrote: > Hello everyone, > > Is it normal to have to apply more pressure to the bag in order to play > the high A and B notes to pitch? All the other notes play nicely to pitch > with against the drones that get tuned perfectly to a blanced low and high > G. > > This is not just a little extra pressure, it is alot. Is it normal to > carve these high note holes to get them to pitch at the same pressure as > the lower notes? > > Thanks, > Sam Edwards > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
