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This is a set of Lawries dating from the 1920s. The wood is African ebony. They were originally mounted in casein. When Steve Rooklidge, the former owner, got hold of them, the casein mounts had all cracked and gone chalky. Being ebony, there were also a number of hairline surface cracks on the exterior of the drones (but none in the bores!), and the blowpipe was cracked beyond repair. Steve sent them to Canadian pipemaker Graham Burley who invisible whipped all of the cracks, remounted the pipes with gorgeous cocobolo mounts, and made a very closely matching blowpipe in brass-lined African blackwood. I strongly suspect that he also may have tweaked the dimensions of the lower bass drone section so that it works better with modern-pitch synthetic reeds.
I bought the set from Steve in 2017, and playing them completely reinvigorated my love for piping. They have a very full and harmonically rich tone with harmonics that pop out all over the place. I’ll post a recording of myself playing them below. It’s recorded on my phone, so not the best quality, but hopefully it’ll give you some idea of the pipes’ character. I think at the time of this recording (pre-COVID) I was playing them with full original Kinnaird reeds in the drones. I’ve played them with Ezeedrones in the tenors more recently; they also sound great with Hitchings High Resonance reeds. Most any type of drone reed should go very well in these pipes.
These are sold as sticks and stocks. No chanter included.
Shipping included in N. America
This Ad has been marked as 'sold' and is no longer available to purchase.