Donaldson Master chanter - before modification

This post is about the state of affairs before modification of the holes on a Donaldson Master chanter. I must flag up a disclaimer here that this article (and all other articles to be followed henceforth) should not be construed as a guide but is merely a memoir of the experiments or endeavours attempted by an inquisitive piper.

The Donaldson Master chanter is a nice chanter in many ways - in my opinion it has the best finger position I have ever come across and a slim and straight main body (down to the D hole if you watch the video below) - so it feels  fantastic in the fingers. It has a distinctly clear and balanced voice. The finish and craftsmanship as shown by the chanter is second to none.

It goes without saying that the chanter sounds good too. See P/M Donaldson playing his chanter.

- the making of the chanter by the great man himself :

A bit of background to the chanter:

See the stamp

What is interesting of the chanter is the zoomorphic hand-engraved silver sole. As you can see from the photo, the sole is stamped P.H with a Glasgow halmark, a prancing lion facing the left, a thistle and a small letter "b". That dates the sole back to 1924 according to the useful guide by Island bagpipes (http://islandbagpipe.com/csi/?page_id=736). I am sure the sole is a retrofit on a new chanter which was purchased first-hand from the College of Piping in 2011/2012. The chanter has a bright sound and pitches at a good modern solo pitch within the region of 478Hz to 482Hz.


Unfortunately, the F and High G are consistently sharp and there is a lot of tape covering the F and high G, rendering the top hand very thin which is a shame. Similar problems have been cited by other users of the chanter (http://www.patrickmclaurin.com/wordpress/?p=1000).

Therefore I would need to do the followings:

1.) "move" the two holes down the chanter by carving the bottom of the F and high G holes and cover the top with tape to make the notes flatter.

2.) enlarge the holes a wee bit - I hope this will help give it a thicker and clearer voice, and clearer gracenotes as well.

It has to be mentioned that much of what makes a good chanter sound also depend on many other intricate factors such as the bore profile and throat of the chanter, chanter reed, set-up of the pipes (e.g. bag, drone reeds) and drone harmonics etc. A usual chanter in my pipes would sound a lot better in Roddy's pipes because a good drone harmonics will lift and reinforce the chanter. But this is beyond the scope of this post. Moreover, lest we forget that the most important thing to a good sound is not in the set-up but is in the playing. A good, steady playing is key. Of course how you set up the pipes and chanter is a pre-requisite to good playing. If you use the wrong bag, a blowpipe of the wrong length, wrong reed then it won't be too much good if you have good playing. This is a fictitious cycle. Good playing has to come hand in hand with (the skill of) good set-up etc. But I digress here.

3.) [optional] if the holes feel too big to the fingers, the top of the holes might have to be filled to make them smaller (See: http://pipingpress.com/famous-pipers-donald-macpherson-part-4/).

Many top players before us have to tweak his own chanter to get the sound desired. In fact I do not know a top solo player who does not have to manipulate his chanter. I strongly believe that every serious piper should, amongst many other things, learn to perfect his own sound and to be able to work towards that goal.