I have had a great many vintage sets of pipes; Henderson 1950, Robertson 1935, Lawrie's 1935 and late 30s, two sets of the Liddle McCallum MacRae's as well as other McCallum pipes. I now have a set of Pre-Production Fred Morrison GHB pipes. These are far and away the most stable and easy to get a great sound of any pipe I have ever had the pleasure to play. When I say incredibly stable, I absolutely mean it. I too use the two Ezeedrone tenor reeds, as well as a Carbon fiber Bass reed of any description. The tone alone blows me away, and the stability makes it just that much better. I've been many years on a tone search, and these are the real deal and I've finished looking.
Great video and great sounding pipes! I just put down my set of Fred Morrison GHBs about a half hour ago, though they're very hard to put down! Fred brought them out to the Celtic Arts Foundation fall workshop north of Seattle back in September, and I was so impressed with them that I had to get a set for myself. I've been playing them for a few months now, and my experience very much matches yours: excellent workmanship (super smooth bores!), incredibly steady, and a powerful Henderson-esque tone. I couldn't be happier with them. I'd been playing a set of refurbished 1920s ebony Lawries for the past several years, which I loved, but these are a cut above. I suspect we'll be seeing more than a few top solo players adopting these in the months and years ahead. (Aside from Fred himself, I know at least one other renowned solo player has already).
Oooooooh!!! Love my McCallums (AB with full nickel and blackwood with Kinnaird Evos - agree bombproof - in all drones and G1 Platinum in my McCallum chanter - other chanter for band down here is Shepherd so Shepherd reed for that one). Notice the line of hemp up to the drone mount from the reed taper to stop them falling in the bag!! Useful that one!!! Looking forward to your new chanters as well. These new pipes look amazing!! Would have been very interested to see the tieing in process for the sheepskin bag as I only have a dive zip synthetic bag (WMC custom bag) which came with my pipes.
Congratulations for your video and your new bagpipe’s set! I have a McCallum AB3 and mostly I use the McCallum wooden Gandy Chanter. My drones are Ezee in the Bass and Selbie’s in the tenors. ( I am a humble aged amateur piper. Thanks so much for your very interesting videos and your performances.
Great video Kyle. I've been playing my Fred Morrison Pre production Highland Pipes since about December too and I'm absolutely loving them. Totally get what you mean about them tuning higher on the pins but what a sound!!!
They sound amazing! I watched this video soon after you posted it and thought maybe one day I might add a set to my own collection. Now, I have my order in and I can't wait to play them. Without realizing it I ordered the same blackwood and ivory (no metal) setup you have. Do you still think the Ezeedrone and Kinaird reeds are the way to go? I have Cannings in my set of Hendersons and they sound great, but I know Fred's pipes are a whole other beast.
Congrats on getting a set on order, Brian, you'll love them honestly! Also very exciting that they're taking orders- looking forward to seeing the rest of the product line up! I've ended up putting a Willie McCallum Bannatyne bag on them with a trap dri bottle and the Bannatyne dri Flo system. Still got the ezees in and the Kinnaird, can't beat it!
Brilliant, you’ll love them! I pretended to play Uilleann fingering on my normal practice chanter for a few weeks in the run up to mine arriving- definitely helped! Obviously don’t blow as it’ll sound weird haha!
You might want to consider using drone seat extenders to bring the tenor tuning down.,this is what I have to do on my 100 year old Starck pipes with ezeedrone reeds., Great looking and sounding pipes BTW.
My guess is the pipes have deep bells and shallow bushes… making the drone sharp and forcing it to tune higher on the pin. Adds a good bit of volume 👍 how do they go with the extended ezee tenors?
Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment! 🙏 I’ve had a bag on for the last 14 months and it’s still going strong, but usually a year to be safe if it’s getting played a lot!
@@KyleHowie thanks, thinking of going sheepskin once my current bag is done. That price tag and how often they should be changed out is hard to justify to the wife, lol
It’s turned into a dedicated sets thing, band pipes, solo pipes and general purpose pipes- Al three sets are brilliant and offer up different things too, I’ll have a video on that at some point 😅😂
@@KyleHowie I've got a band set and a solo set and I'm always feeling like I don't play either enough! I'd have a hard time with 3+ sets but I want another set haha
IIRC from talking with Fred, they're based on his set of pre-1900 Hendersons, though with the usual caveat that the lower bass section has been tweaked to better accommodate modern-pitch synthetic reeds.
@@KyleHowiethanks for posting. We met in 2022 at the Glenfiddich-I sat in front of you. A couple of questions: 1. How different are these to early Hendersons. I own a set of early Hendersons (dated early 1900s) and they sound a lot like these-very pronounced drone sound. 2. How do these compare to other McCallum products: their standard line and the Duncan MacRae line? 3. Probably don’t know this one, that’s okay, but how are these pipes different to Hardies. I thought Hardie had a lock on all things Hendersons. Many thanks to Kenny and Team McCallum for providing you these. They’re best in class people. Never had a bad interaction with them.
