A secondary, quieter smallpipe-style chanter - see below. It has three drones, a bass, a baritone and a tenor. The chanter, patterned after a 19th century chanter by an unknown maker, has a conical bore; its length and fingerhole spacing are very close to a GHB chanter. The pipe is finely machined not molded of Delrin polypenco and is mounted in a Gore-Tex synthetic bag made by a major UK bag-maker , which has a velvet cover.

Pipes & Pipers

Scottish Smallpipes and Border pipes
The border pipes are a type of bagpipe related to the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe. It is perhaps confusable with the Scottish smallpipe , although it is a quite different and much older instrument. Although most modern Border pipes are closely modelled on similar historic instruments, the modern Scottish smallpipes are a modern reinvention, inspired by historic instruments but largely based on Northumbrian smallpipes in their construction. The name, which is modern, refers to Scotland's border country , where the instrument was once common, so much so that many towns there used to maintain a piper. The instrument was found much more widely than this, however; it was noted as far north as Aberdeenshire , south of the Border in Northumbria and elsewhere in the north of England. Indeed, some late 17th-century paintings, such as a tavern scene by Egbert van Heemskerck , probably from south-eastern England, show musicians playing such instruments. Other names have been used for the instrument: Lowland pipes and reel pipes in Scotland, and half-long pipes in Northumbria. However, the term reel pipes historically refers to instruments similar to Highland pipes, but primarily intended for indoor use.
Border Pipes
Several of the fingerholes on the original chanter have been greatly enlarged - especially the C hole. It was hard to assess what actual pitch it originally played at; my approach was to modify my design so that it would play in concert A using a special reed that I have developed, using fingering similar to the Highland pipes. Though somewhat quieter than its Highland cousin it has a loud bright tone, as one might expect for a pipe designed for outdoor playing, such as Ritchie would need on his morning and evening rounds of the town.
Played in the North of England and the Lowlands of Scotland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Border Pipes are currently undergoing a renaissance. Quiet enough to play alongside other acoustic instruments but maintaining the characteristic skirl of the Great Highland Bagpipe GHB , Border pipes are typically in A, are bellows-blown, have three drones set in a common stock which lie across the chest, have a nine note scale, and usually employ GHB fingering. There is no formalised gracing style but the nature of the instrument lends itself to GHB ornamentation.