What Else Kept Me Occupied

Granuaille got a brand new chanter last week. Well, new to her anyway. It's actually an abw Naill from the early '90s, so perhaps I ought to say a new 25 year old chanter. A very good year for Naill chanters in my experience. (The chanter you see her wearing in the picture with the orange-ish sole isn't the new one; that's actually an old Hardy pitched a good deal lower than the new one.)

I did some preliminary tuning when it first arrived, but I finally got a chance to take her out last Friday to the park for a good workout. The chanter took an Apps reed with hardly any tweaking at all. Just a wee touch of tape on the E and F and she was singing. It's really a lovely, mellow chanter and I'm delighted with it.

And now I'm thinking maybe I should mellow out the drones and get a better blend. The old wygents in there now are pretty robust. Hmm, cane. I may be too old to spend my dotage messing about with cane. But it really does make for a sweeter pipe. Decisions, decisions.

(And, yes, there are only two drones. She's an Irish warpipe that Kintail made in 1982.)