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December 27th, 2008

A Review of the “Geoffry” Uilleann Bagpipe

A “Geoffry” half set landed in my lap a few days ago. It’s owner thought it a fine instrument, but for some reason “it would not play” and “might need a little setup”.

I write this review in hope that whoever is considering ordering a similar “Geoffry” half set from eBay or a storefront vendor will get some idea what they are in for.

This item also seems to be sold under the name “Si”.

Based on what I have seen, this “Geoffry” half set would lead to extreme frustration on the part of a beginner. The Uilleann Bagpipes are difficult enough for a beginner to approach, even in the best of cases, with a quality instrument. Attempting to learn on the “Geoffry” would be an uphill battle. I have to wonder how many beginners give up soon after acquisition of such an instrument.

While parts of the half set can “perhaps” be made to work by someone knowledgeable in the workings of Uilleann Bagpipes, I would ask: why bother? Excellent and relatively trouble free half-sets are available for a similar price from David Daye, Patrick Skye, C.J. Dixon, Davy Stephenson and several other established and reputable makers. The waits for such instruments are generally short, in the order of 2-4 months.

Several things that I found particularly offensive about this “instrument” are:

a) The name “Geoffry”, which is an obvious attempt to elicit the name of Geoff Woof, a master Uilleann Bagpipe maker. The “Geoffry” pipes bear no relation to that makers excellent work.

b) The target audience for these pipes are naive in the extreme– generally people who are just developing a fancy for the instrument and know little about it. Some are GHB players making assumptions that Uilleann pipes are standardized. Some are caught by the seeming visual attractiveness of these pipes or the exaggerated sales pitches in the eBay ads.

c) Several eBay sellers of this brand boast near 100% approval ratings, with many glowing comments and reviews evident. Given that the pipes as shipped, do not play, and never will without considerable modification, I find this practice intentionally fraudulent and don’t understand why eBay allows this. People are being ripped off for a LOT of money, typically $300-$1500 in US dollars. The few negative comments that exist are responded to by the sellers abusively: “stupid buyer”, “unprofessional buyer”, “ignorant”, “broke in shipping”, etc.

d) Seemingly no effort has been made by the manufacturer at quality control. Just assemble the mismatched and poorly fitted parts and ship.

e) Return policies for these pipes vary from no return allowed, to return in seven days and pay for shipping. The more common return policy among the venders I reviewed on eBay was that returns were not allowed.

f) As shipped, they do not work.

g) They will never work correctly without costly modification.

Review of the “Geoffry” Uilleann Bagpipe Half Set
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It is my understanding that these pipes are made in Pakistan, by a small shop mainly serving the Great Highland Bagpipe trade. The “Geoffry” may be based on some existing makers design, though they seem different than the Tim Britton influenced instruments made by Mid-East Manufacturing.

If anyone knows if a particular makers design was used, I would like to know.

In all this half-set is an odd contrivance. Some parts, like the bag, bellows, and drones, have the potential for working, to some degree, with minor modification. Other components, like the chanter reeds and chanter, will never work well, or perhaps at all. It is as though different parts, made by different people, were thrown together in the dark, and shipped.

Case
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The pipes arrived in an attractive case. The case is on the small side, requiring complete disassembly of drones for transport. Given how much tweaking is needed to get the drones working properly– once they working, a beginner would not want to dissemble them, so they would probably have to seek another larger case.

Bag and Bellows
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The tacked bellows are tight with no leaks. Overall finish is quite sloppy. The gusset made of leather tacked to hardwood clappers. Both clappers are padded. The leather hinge is inadequate for the task of prolonged pumping, but could be replaced with a stiffer leather for more adequate performance. There is too much lateral movement of the clappers.

Hardware fittings are the cheapest available, and little effort has been made to match screws, tacks, colors etc. The waist and arm straps are made of plastic and are quite uncomfortable, and would have to be replaced with something less chafing. Belt holes are placed for a overweight giant, and require trimming even for a 200 pound man. Replacement could be accomplished fairly easily using nylon webbing and pack strap clips.

The bellows intake valve as shipped feels restrictive. Upon removal, it proved to be of adequate construction with a neoprene flapper glued to a brass strip tied to the valve body, forcing the flapper against the valve outlet. For some reason, the brass strip had been bent inwards, forcing the flapper almost permanently closed. By bending the brass outwards a bit, the flapper became less restrictive, airflow was much improved and the bellows now fills the medium size bag with three pumps. The bellows exhaust is of stainless steel, neatly silver-soldered, and adequate. In all, the bellows work with only a little adjustment. Aesthetically, it is not attractive.

The bag-bellows connector is made of clear plastic tubing that is easily crimped and which would cut-off air flow when playing. A quick fix is to replace with car radiator hose, which will not crimp. The connector needed hose clamps at the bellows and the bag ends to remain tight, otherwise, it leaked air. The plastic hose connector is covered with an attractive black velveteen sleeve with elastic ends.

The blowstock looks like a GHB blowstock. It is much longer than it needs to be. Inner diameter seems adequate for airflow. The inner flapper valve seems to work, and I did not dissemble the bag to inspect it.

The medium size bag is of real two-ply laminated leather. Lamination seemed well done, with flock of the outer thicker leather glued to the flock of what looked like a thin glove leather or pigskin. Seams are glued, but not riveted or stitched. As shipped, the chanter stock tie-in leaked badly. Because of the design of the chanter stock (one groove) achieving an air tight seal was difficult. I ended up using contact cement followed by a tie in using the constrictor knot, to make a positive seal. The blowstock and mainstock tie-ins did not leak, and were tied neatly. Surprisingly, once that leak was plugged, the bag holds air quite well. Perhaps the manufacturer should sell bags stand-alone.

The bag is covered with a black velveteen bag cover which seems durable and is reasonably attractive. The cover can easily be removed.

The chanter stock was drilled too small to receive a Penny Chanter. I think the hole is too small for most chanters and would have to be re drilled.

Chanter and Reeds
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Visually, the un keyed chanter is attractive. It appears to be made of a freshly stained rosewood. It actually looks pretty nice to an untrained eye, having stainless steel fittings, imitation ivory mounts, and impressive looking but unused key blocks.

Looks aren’t everything…

I do not believe that this chanter will ever sound like a proper Uilleann chanter, or play a two octave scale-in tune. Perhaps I am wrong– has anyone been able to prove otherwise? (Note that I have been able to make the Tim Britton influenced Mid East Manufacturing Rosewood chanter play relatively in tune over two octaves with a proper reed.)

The chanter windcap is made of stainless steel, with lines turned into the steel as ornamentation. The soldered windcap inlet joint appears clean and well done. The chanter is capped with an attractive imitation ivory turning.

Below the windcap is another imitation ivory turning, loosely attached.

The chanter wooden body itself is 15″ is length. That seems very long.

Above the bell of the chanter is another plastic mount, also quite loose.

The bell is encased with a stainless steel ferule with turned lines as decoration.

My guess is that wood used was not seasoned properly, and is now shrinking, as lose fittings are a problem everywhere.

Intuitively, placement of the upper tone holes seems wrong. Back D seems much too high on the chanter. To my eye, the hole geometry and sizing just does not seem right.

A bag of reeds was included. Two chanter reeds are made of plastic, and three of cane.

With the plastic reed the chanter sounded through about 2/3 of the first, or lower, octave. This was well short of the expected two octave range of a proper Uilleann chanter. Every note above G being was out of tune.As a rule of thumb, plastic reeds are not known to work properly, or at all, in Uilleann chanters. It was interesting to note that the owner of this half-set had no idea that a plastic chanter reed was out of the ordinary for an Uilleann chanter. He also had an expectation that Uilleann reeds were mass produced and could be purchased similar to GHB reeds.

Surprisingly, three cane reeds were included that bore some resemblance to traditional Uilleann chanter reeds. Dimensions were 83mm OAL, 15mm width, and the a staple eye ofabout 2.5mm. One of the three actually crowed at G#. After slight sanding and clipping of this reed I placed it in the chanter. Results were a vaguely in-tune one-octave scale, increasingly out of tune the higher one plays. The second octave does not sound with this reed.

I do not believe that whoever made these reeds had an understanding of Uilleann reeds, as it just looks all wrong. The two other cane reeds had strange geometries and I did not bother trying them out.

While there may be an optimal reed configuration for this chanter, I do not know what it is. I believe that lack of a workable reed would be a complete barrier to the beginner. If anyone has been able to reed this chanter, I would like to know the geometry that works.

I did try a known David Daye Reed, a known Martin Preshaw reed, and one of my own (83mmOAL, 12.5mm width, 2mm eye). All had crazy and unexpected results, and none would sound a second octave.

In all cases tone was muted and not at all like what one would associate with an Uilleann chanter.

In all cases tuning was unacceptably bad.

I believe there is design fault in both the reed and in the chanter geometry.

Drones
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Surprisingly, when properly reeded, the three drones played at concert D, with a mellow and pleasing sound. However, it took about four hours of patient tweaking to get them to that point, and they are still nowhere near 100%.

The three drones seemed all at the correct length, or thereabouts, for a concert D instrument.

Two tenor, two baritone, and two bass drone reeds were shipped. None would crow as shipped. They appeared to be made properly, but all seemed short. With a little fiddling they sounded, and could be brought into tune by moving the bridal about. Once in tune the tenor and baritone drones produced a mellow but stable drone.

The bass drone proved problematic, I believe because of the reed, which was too short. Being out of drone cane, I had no opportunity to experiment further. My impression was that it probably could be stabilized at D with proper length and diameter cane.

I did wonder how these might sound with a standardized drone reed set like that available from EzeeDrone. The owner has ordered a set and we shall see.

Drone fittings were exceedingly sloppy. Stainless steel ferules, as shipped, were loose and falling off, with no thread windings at all holding them to the chanter. Imitation ivory mounts were loose, and would fall off easily, having not been glued or fixed into place with thread. All parts smelled like fresh varnish, and coloring of the Rosewood was probably achieved in this way. It looks like it had all been thrown together by an unskilled worker and not tested.

Mainstock
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The mainstock was problematic.

The stock is drilled for three drones. No regulators could be added later.

Drilling of the drone holes is sloppy. The three drones do not fit tightly into the stock, and flop about even with lots of extra winding and Teflon tape. The holes have been drilled at an angle, and while I know this is intentional in some instruments, the crazy angles reflected perhaps freehand drilling as opposed to any plan. The stock is attached to a surprisingly nicely turned cup which is well tied to the bag. Mainstock fittings were of stainless steel and are reasonably attractive. I’m not sure what kind of wood is used, it is very heavy.

The stainless steel drone on-off switch is too tight, making turning the drones on and off difficult. It would have to be bored out a bit bigger to work properly. This switch was also huge and interfered with chanter playing. Visually it was unattractive and ergonomically difficult to use.

Summary
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I can’t emphasize enough how frustrating the “Geoffry” half set will be to a beginning player. My recommendation is to avoid this poorly designed and fitted instrument. Instead of wasting your money on the “Geoffry” half set, please consider the excellent practice and half sets available from some of the established and reputable makers that frequent this board.

In summary:

– the case is inadequate in size for a half set;

– the bag and bellows need significant adjustment not to leak;

– the chanter reeds have design flaws and are unworkable as proper Uilleann Bagpipe reeds;

– the chanter plays only one octave, is out of tune, and this could not be remedied without costly re boring and hole repositioning;

– the drones may (or may not) work with adjustment, assuming you know how to do so;

– the drilling on the mainstock is sloppy, and;

– fittings and mounts are loose everywhere.

If you spend your money on this set, likely your wife will divorce you, little children will run away from you screaming, and puppies will bite you.

I invite your impressions and corrections.

I challenge the makers or sellers of this half-set to respond with postive crituque. If I am wrong in aspects of this review, particularly in regards to the chanter and reeds, how can one remedy?

Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 10:23 AM EST

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