Computer designed software and CNC manufacturing machines have allowed pipe makers to steadily improve their designs over time. About 20 or 25 years ago, there was a change, and some bagpipe makers started making their chanters with bigger holes. They pushed the idea that bigger holes meant a bigger sound, but there’s a problem with that. Bigger holes make it harder to play clean. Bigger holes are harder to cover, which means you have to be more accurate with your fingering. And it’s more likely that you’ll have a chirp or a squeal caused by not entirely covering a hole. Execution sounds less tidy and less clear when you’re playing a chanter with these bigger holes. 

Think about your low G-hole, it’s the largest hole in your chanter, and you need to cover it with your littlest finger. When traveling around the world, piping in cold weather and smaller hands makes things even worse. In competitions, I started noticing that some players who had good clean consistent technique indoors or on warm days would often struggle in cool temperatures outside. 

Bigger holes make it hard for everybody to play clean and even harder on those cold days or for pipers with smaller fingers, trust me. I know. As a workaround, I started putting tape on the bottom of the bigger holes to make them smaller just so that I could cover them more easily, but too much tape on the bottom of a hole can lead to random, massive loud squeals. 

I remember playing with the top piper who saw the chanter I was playing at the time and told me, “Oh, that’s a great sounding chanter, but I’ll never play it. The holes are too big.” So more and more pipers started talking about the “good old days when we had more comfortable chanters” with smaller, easier to play holes. 

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to play with clean fingering on your practice chanter than on your pipes? The problem with chanters made decades ago, is that their overall sound doesn’t hold up to today’s standards. Older pipe chanters don’t sound good and don’t work with modern reeds. On the other hand, many modern chanters have a great sound, but the large holes make it harder to play clean. I knew there had to be pipers like me who wanted a bright-sounding modern chanter that stays in tune, that works with a mix of different reads, and has smaller, more closely spaced holes for greater playing comfort and cleaner fingering. 

I reached out to some bagpipe makers to see if they would make me a custom chanter with smaller holes. I wanted a regular chanter just with smaller holes. “That’s impossible,” they said. “It’s not that simple,” they said. “You just can’t make the hole smaller and keep everything else the same. It won’t work.” About five years later, I got an email from Alistair Dunn at R.G. Hardie in Scotland, who told me they’ve been working on a prototype of a new chanter, and he wanted me to try it. He said it had smaller holes. I waited a week for the package to arrive, and when I opened it up and I saw it for the first time, I was amazed. The holes were really quite a bit smaller. When I put my fingers on the chanter, the hole size and spacing felt perfect.

Finally, a modern pipe chanter with smaller holes spaced close together. But now, here’s the big question: what about the sound? I put my best reed in the new chanter and put it into my pipes and gave my pipes a blow. The new sound was dramatic: big, bright, crisp, and clear. I played a few tunes and got tuned up. The new chanter sounded and felt amazing. Difficult finger execution passages sounded cleaner and felt instantly easier to play, even with some of my biggest and most difficult tunes. What about the other notes on the chanter? The top hand, the F, the D, the high A, high G? I tried a bit of Piobaireachd, and the high G was perfect, stable, clear, and unwavering. My dream had come true. Introducing the Infinity chanter from R.G. Hardie.

The Infinity chanter achieved something I didn’t think was possible. A pipe chanter with a world-class modern sound and smaller holes for ultimate finger comfort and clarity of execution.  It’s a dramatic breakthrough in pipe chanter design.

After playing it, I never want to go back to a chanter with bigger holes. I’ve measured the holes on several different pipe chanters: the Infinity chanter’s holes are up to 40 percent smaller than some of those other chanters.  It’s available in Blackwood and Poly (plastic).

Both are available right now from my BagpipeLessons.com shop.  Every piper I’ve shown the Infinity chanter to has been amazed.  They say things like “wow the holes really are so small,”  “it’s so comfortable,”  “my bottom hand execution is so much cleaner.”  I think you’ll be amazed too. 

Now let’s dive into the details and up close compare the poly and Blackwood models of the Infinity chanter.  Both versions have the smaller holes that make playing much more comfortable but there are some differences in sound and feel.

Here’s the Blackwood version of the infinity chanter.  It has a more refined and smoother sound. It comes in this beautiful chanter case with the chanter cap.  Although you’ll want to get rid of that and use a Tone Protector instead. The Blackwood chanter is generally preferred by soloists for the rich and warm tone.  In addition the Blackwood version has this amazing feature: the holes are smoothed and sanded making it the most comfortable chanter I’ve ever played.  Here you can see the R.G. Hardie and Company logo and the infinity symbol etched into the wood it’s really a beautiful chanter.  You can see the beautiful grain of the wood.  When I get a new Blackwood chanter, I always take a few nice photos that show the beautiful wood grain because over time in a few months this will darken and it will be jet black.