Donald MacPhee Recital May 2010

Donald's recital was the last of the winter series which took off in January with Roddy Macleod.  This recital took place in Dingwall Town Hall, a large hall, slightly on the cool side at first but soon warmed up. Donald has a very friendly and informal style and chatted to the audience between sessions.  His piobaireachd was the Earl of Antrim, and very enjoyable it was too, played on a set of Henderson drones.  The second session he changed over to a set of Lawrie's for strathspeys and reels, hormpipes and jigs.  All very enjoyable on good sounding pipes. 

Young Niall Jack from Culbokie played two sessions of 15-20 minutes on a set of McCallums with a very nice tone.  Niall is an accomplished player and plays for fun rather than competition, which I have a deal of sympathy for.  

Turnout was good for a very wet 24hours in this part of Scotland and now we look forward to the restart of recitals in the month of October.

McCallum Bagpipes Latest News 17 May 2010

Kenny and Stuart have announced improvements to the McCallum Bagpipe range:

"We have been using a new alloy on the mounts instead of nickel, and in fact we have been using it since the end of last year. The mounts will be made by us, so it means we will be able to thread them, and therefore thread the wood as well, so that all the ferrules, ringcaps, projecting mounts and hemp retainers will be threaded from now on

All the projecting mounts have been threaded for several months, so the next logical progression was to thread all the parts.  The threaded mounts, which some people in the market place prefer, takes us on to the same level as some of the hand makers.

There won’t be any change in price -  See the brochure here

The alloy also won’t tarnish, which is another thing people dislike. Nickel can tarnish pretty quickly and once it gets too bad, it’s impossible to clean. We’re changing the imitation ivory as well, to a much stronger material, which again will be easier to thread, but wont chip. It’s a better colour than the whiter stuff we used before, and it looks more like ivory, so it has a lot of positives."