Over the year or so that I've had my A2000s, the drone tuning has gotten sharper and sharper. The reeds are a bit weird as they are built into the sticks, so they don't have a screw like synthetics. The sharpness didn't bother me so much until recently (as I ran out of tuning pin to use!) so I used the contact form on the website and a few days later John called me. The steps are really simple:
- Make sure the chanter is right around 440. Don't ever touch the chanter reed unless he tells you to.
- Pull the drone cap out of the instrument (the part with the grip).
- Locate the reed that needs a pitch adjustment.
- If you want more space, you can pull the drone out of the reed cap (at least on the poly models).
- Put your finger on the reed tongue to prevent it from moving (if it does move, you can move it back into position - just make sure the end of the tongue completely covers the hole with 1/16th of an inch overshooting the hole.
- Push the two adjacent bridles up toward your thumb to sharpen the pitch, or down toward the single bridle to lower it.
- Don't mess with the bottom (single) bridle.
Quite simple, and not the rocket science that I had heard that Walsh reeds are. One note - I found that the bridles need to be adjusted a bit more than you do when you're setting the cutoff on GHBs. 1/16th of an inch of movement on the bass drone = about 2 inches of flattening on the tuning pin. So it ended up being about a 30:1 ratio. I don't know if this ratio applies to the other drones.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful for anyone who wants to adjust the drone tuning on their Walsh pipes!
01-16-2019, 08:41 AM
Adjusting Walsh A2000 drone reeds
