Why does my chanter sound like crap?

[OC Richard]

Here's the new brightly coloured McCallum PCs in various lengths. I bought one yesterday (red, long) and I love it.



Not everyone's cup of tea. I also have a nice ivory mounted PC from the 1950s but it, like most traditional PCs, pitches around Concert B Flat (where the pipes themselves were pitched in the mid-20th century). In the band I have to use a modern 'long' or 'fullsize' PC because everybody else is, and these all are pitching rather lower, around 450 cycles (Concert B Flat is 466 cycles).

As PCs have been moving down in pitch, the pipe chanters have been moving up, from around 466 in the 1960s to around 482 today.

About long PCs being problematic, I find the opposite. For one thing, the fact that they have vent holes means that the bottom can be rested on a leg. About not being able to play while sitting at a table, yes, if the chair is low and/or the table is high and/or the piper is short. I have no trouble, given a table and chair of ordinary height.

BTW here is what two ordinary Gibson long PCs, with Gibson plastic reeds, sound like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4lw8-3Jf9w