≫ Poly or Blackwood Chanter? | Patrick McLaurin's Bagpipe Blog

I was asked if there were tonal differences between poly and blackwood chanters. I said, “Maybe, but you wouldn’t know which one was which.” See if you can tell the difference and perhaps which one is which. The two recordings below are EXACTLY the same setup (Chris Terry drones, Redwood tenor reeds, X-TREME bass reed, the SAME John Elliott chanter reed , L&M hide bag, same recording session, same original mp3 file, and the same standing position as best as I could remember) except one was recorded using a poly Colin Kyo chanter and the other using a blackwood Colin Kyo chanter. The chanters are roughly the same “older” vintage and both came in just shy of 481 Hz (modern Kyo chanters come in under 480 Hz in my experience). Both had tape on high G and the poly also had tape on E. The recordings are a bit drone heavy and I slightly regret that, but oh well. It’ll go toward correcting the balance of all those professional recordings where the drones are almost inaudible.

Fair Maid & Arnish Light 1