Col C
08-12-2008, 01:11 PM
Is there some particular way to identify the Mark II Shepherd ABW chanter?. I bought a Shepherd ABW chanter in early 1998 after reading Jim McGillivray's review in the August'97 issue of the Piper and Drummer. When was the MkII introduced and is it still in production?
Chris Hamilton
08-12-2008, 01:31 PM
The poly Mark 2 is easy to distinguish - it has a unique and elegant foot on it.
The blackwood Mark 2 has a very simple, almost Soviet-style foot - no fluting, sculpting, or angles, just rounded out and down.
It can be distinguished from the Mark 3's stepped foot pretty easily.
The Mark 3 was introduced in 1998 ... IIRC it was played at the Worlds that year by Dysart, and James Wark (perhaps among others) played one in the Strathclyde Police. But it wasn't for a couple of years or so that it really caught on, a there were some tweaks done to work out the kinks.
The chanter seen now as the "Mark 3 Classic" would more appropriately be termed a Mark 4 ... but that's marketing.
Chris
Col C
08-12-2008, 03:20 PM
Chris, Thanks for the info. From your description of the "foot" it appears that I have a MkII. Looking at the date of the P&D issue with the McGillivray article(Aug 97) and your recollection about the timing of the introduction of the MkIII it looks like he may have been writing about the MkII.