Losing air at bass drone

[Achilles Piper]

One test that's easy to do is to remove the drone reeds and suck the open end of each reed while very lightly holding the tongue closed. It's pretty apparent if air is leaking through the reed. In some cases I have found that air leaks around the tuning screw. This is readily fixed with a little plumbers' teflon tape wound onto the screw thread. But really the amount of air loss is tiny compared with the air consumption when the reeds are sounding. I am much more concerned with having reeds which are air-efficient and sound good, rather than ones which pass the Bruce Hitching's test, which tells one nothing about how air-efficient the reeds are while operating, only how well they seal when closed!

[Loud-one]

I have been wondering this very issue. I saw the same video and thought that I must be losing efficiency because my drone reeds won't hold air like his did in the video. My drone reeds are barely under a year old, like my pipes. I did try to close up the bridles a bit and that did help some but quickly found I was putting them near back to what they were before.

[Tom1136]

I've recently had the same problem. I eventually found that the "glue" joints were leaking at a couple of places on the base. removed and re-glued them. No air leaks now. tom