Dear Ross,
I have just had a set of drone reeds I tongued with plastic returned to me for re-tongueing with cane. The player had compared the tone against a cane tongued set and did not like the tone. There are a good number of folk out there with educated ears (lugs) that can hear the difference so I do not think there will be a major shift to plastic tongues for small pipes. Maybe for the Highland pipes for practical pitch stability reasons in the band scene but I think the solo pipers will put up with a faily long tuning in period for the sake of the better tone in their opinion. Cheers, Colin -----Original Message----- From: Ross Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:45 Subject: [NSP] Re: Drones and tuning Barry > I would like to be able to make drone reeds which give a constant > pitch from 12" to 20" of water gauge. The masters at this are the people who make union pipes. Robert Reid, of course, make both union pipes and Northumbrian pipes. > With such reeds, the problems beginners have in getting steady > drones would be much reduced. The rest of the world's come to the conclusion that beginners, at least, should use plastic drone reeds. Most Highland pipers (other than the top soloists) now use Ezeedrones: rather than tuning for 20 minutes you just get the pipes out of the box, stick them on your shoulder and play them. It's a no-brainer unless you're a purist. In the border piping world, Nigel Richards and Jon Swayne pipes use plastic reeds. So do Julian Goodacre's. In the uilleann world, plastic is gaining ground - it's just the longevity of the existing reeds that keeps most people playing cane. And now that some Northumbrian pipema! kers offer a brass-with-plastic option we may see the same gradual changeover here too. OK, so I spoke heresy. Flame away! Ross To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html ________________________________________________________________________ AOL Email goes Mobile! You can now read your AOL Emails whilst on the move. Sign up for a free AOL Email account with unlimited storage today. --
