0:02 Unboxing R.G. Hardie Bagpipes – What’s in the box

0:01 Hey, everybody, Jori Chisholm here from BagpipeLessons.com. I was not planning on making a video today, but something very special arrived at my doorstep from Scotland.

0:09 And I thought it’d be fun to throw on the camera here and let you enjoy this moment with me that I always enjoy, which is opening up a new set of bagpipes. So these came from R.G. Hardie in Scotland, and they got here really fast. Let’s take a look.

0:34 Now, many of you who have been following my YouTube channel, you know that I’m a huge fan of the whole world of R.G. Hardie products in general, but of their Infinity pipe chanter, which is my favorite pipe chanter, with the smaller holes and the closer spacing and an amazing sound. And of course I’m a huge fan of their practice chanters, especially the practice chanter that I designed that they’re making for me, the Endurance Practice Chanter, which has moisture control system built in.

0:41 Why I Love R.G. Hardie Products – My experience with their chanters & pipes

0:56 But R.G. Hardie, of course, famous around the world for making bagpipes, and that’s what we have here today. With every shipment, the delivery note says what’s in here. We’ve got a set of RGH O2AB bagpipes, sticks only, the Deluxe Piper case in gray, and a black bag cover.

1:13 What’s Included in This Set – A breakdown of the pipes, case, and accessories

1:22 So they do a really nice job of packaging things up, plenty of bubble wrap. All right, and here we have the very cool Deluxe R.G. Hardie case. I love this case. Backpack style, really well made, lots of compartments for all of your various maintenance supplies, little zipper pouches in here, all kinds of great stuff, big enough to get some sheet music, maybe even a three-ring binder of folder music. Another pouch, more spots, Velcro, zippers for your brushes and reeds and bagpipe gauge and pokers and all that good stuff.

1:58 Overview of the Deluxe Pipe Case – Backpack-style, durable, and spacious

2:04 Very well made and cool-looking pipe case too. It comes in different colors. I think this gray color just looks really, really nice. Let’s open it up and see what’s in here. Oh, there we go. All right, got the bag cover. There we go, in black corduroy with the dimple patch, which is very important for the nonslip, and it’s got the zipper on the bottom. Once I assemble the pipes, I’ll be putting this cover on. Very nice cover. Put that to the side.

2:57 Black Corduroy Pipe Cover – Features a non-slip patch and a zippered bottom

2:57 And more bubble wrap. So when you get a set of pipes that are sticks only, some flyers in here and the warranty card, you can fill that out when you get pipes. You can usually get them fully set up, or what’s called sticks only. The sticks only is the bagpipes themselves, and if you’re new to bagpipes or you’re new to buying a full set of pipes, the pipes themselves are three drones, you have a bass drone, two tenor drones, a blowpipe and five stocks. So that’s kind of the minimum of what would be included in a set of bagpipes. It’s not playable in that state.

3:40 Understanding "Sticks-Only" Pipes – What’s included and what’s missing

3:44 Because you need to add the bag itself, you need to add the reeds, you need to have drone cords to hold the drones together, and you need a pipe chanter. A lot of pipers will, well, first of all, a lot of pipers who play old pipes, or pipes that they’ve had for decades or their whole life, the components that I just mentioned that make up the sticks only, that’s the part that typically doesn’t change.

4:09 Why Chanters & Reeds Are Upgraded Over Time – The evolution of bagpipe setups

4:09 Everything else changes. You change the bag, it’s replaceable. You change the reeds. These would be just like tires on your car or filters or things that get replaced every few years, probably. And then the pipe chanter itself. Many sets of pipes come with the pipe chanter, but that is also a component of the bagpipes that pipers will typically change throughout their piping career, because chanters keep getting better. They keep coming out with designs that are more comfortable to play. They have a great sound that gives this beautiful, nice, bright, efficient, projecting modern sound that we love.

4:42 So even pipers that play really, really old pipes, from the 100 years old or 125 years old bagpipes, they’re playing modern pipe chanters. So the pipe chanter is something that changes.

4:49 So when you get sticks only, it’s going to look something like this, individually wrapped, hopefully in bubble wrap. And this is really important, because in the shipping process these things are going to be banging against each other. So it’s not just enough to have them in a case, but you want each individual part to be separated from the other parts so they don’t get damaged in shipping.

5:12 How Pipes Are Packaged for Shipping – Protecting your investment

5:21 So let’s take them apart here, carefully cutting the tape here. These are very well wrapped. I am going to be setting up these pipes for a customer who reached out to me, who is interested in a set of pipes that would have a great sound, but also looking for a particular kind of look.

5:48 And the look of these pipes is African Blackwood with the combing and beading. That’s the traditional style of decoration here. So you can see the little lines, they call that the combing, and then in between the combing are these little, we call it the bead, so little smooth areas with the fine lines.

6:05 Exploring the Blackwood Mounts & Nickel Ferrules – A closer look at the materials

6:11 This part here is called the projecting mount, and a lot of pipes you will see the projecting mounts will be like an ivory-type color, like a lighter color, so it used to be elephant ivory. You have other types of ivories. These days most bagpipes that have that ivory look do not use real elephant ivory, of course, because it’s hard to get, it’s expensive, it’s prone to cracking, and also we want to make bagpipes where we don’t have to kill elephants to do it.

6:42 So we don’t need elephant ivory. So you would have imitation ivory, but these have a very cool look, this darker look. These are African Blackwood mounts, so they’re the same material as the rest of the pipes. These rings, these metal rings, are called the ferrules, so these are nickel. A ferrule is this metal band that’s used to hold it together. And if you’ve ever seen a pencil that has the eraser at the end, this eraser is all used up, but that little metal thing that connects the eraser to the pencil, that’s also a ferrule. And then here at the top we have the caps, so this is the top of the bass drone. Let’s pull out the rest of the bass drone.

7:09 The Blowpipe & Stock Innovation – How R.G. Hardie prevents moisture-related cracking

7:46 Here, pulling off all this bubble wrap just reminds me of a time I bought some drinking glasses online. These are some really cool glasses that matched some that I had at home, and they were vintage and hard to get. Anyway, I found a place that had, I think, six of these glasses, and when the package arrived to me, it was a nice sturdy cardboard box, but right when I picked it up I could hear the sound of jingling of broken glass on the inside.

8:10 And I actually got my phone out and I took a little video of it to show the jingling before I opened it, just to prove to the person who shipped these to me that they arrived to me in the broken condition. And what they had done, they had done a great job of wrapping the box and sealing up the box and lining the box with bubble wrap. Right in the middle of all that bubble wrap were the six glasses all touching each other with no cushioning between them, and they just all shattered as they were banging into each other being shipped.

8:41 So this is a really, really important deal if you’re ever shipping bagpipes, used or new, if you’re selling pipes, if you’re receiving pipes, new or old, wherever they’re going, every piece needs to be individually wrapped, just like these.

8:58 All right, so here we have this beautiful blowpipe. Here’s the blowpipe stock. So the sticks only come with five stocks, blowpipe stock, and this is really cool because this blowpipe stock here, well, and the blowpipe, this part here is the part of the bagpipes that is most likely to crack.

9:15 And cracking doesn’t typically come from physical damage. Cracking comes from moisture. And what can happen is that this wood, especially if you haven’t played it in a while or you haven’t oiled it, or if they’re brand new, the moisture from your breath condenses inside there and soaks into the wood, and when it soaks in it swells, and the inside swells and it splits the outside. The outside doesn’t have the ability to expand as much as the inside does with all the moisture, so it splits.

9:37 Why Plastic Liners Are a Game-Changer – The best of both worlds in blowpipe design

9:47 But R.G. Hardie has done a really cool thing. This is the mouthpiece. This is plastic and it’s removable. And what you can see is this reed part on the inside of the blowpipe, this is plastic. And this part here with the hemp part, this is also plastic. So they’ve done an ingenious job here, which is the outside has this beautiful African Blackwood projecting mount and this beautiful African Blackwood blowpipe exterior, but the inside, where all the moisture goes from your breath, from your spit, is plastic, so there’s no way that any moisture can get to this wood blowpipe from the inside.

10:28 Really, really cool invention. So you get the best of both worlds. You get the classic look and the feel of the African Blackwood that matches the rest of your pipes, but it’s never going to crack. Same thing with the blowpipe stock. When this is in your pipes, the bag will be attached here.

10:51 This is African Blackwood, but the part that goes inside your bag, this is plastic, and this part is plastic. So again you have a shell on the outside, and it’s not a thin veneer, it’s a thick piece of African Blackwood, but the core, the plastic, is where the moisture goes. So this is a great combination of design and style. I’m a big fan of the classic look, so you maintain that classic look, but the function of the plastic that’s never going to crack. So here we have, I hope, the bass drone, the bottom section of the bass drone.

11:26 How I’ll Set Up These Pipes for a Customer – The next steps in assembly

11:36 So once I get these things all packed up, I won’t be doing it on today’s video, but I am going to get these pipes totally set up. I have three other videos on the channel about building a set of bagpipes. I did it. There’s a two-part one here, it’s called “Build Your Bagpipes,” where I went through and built a set of pipes for a student, taking from all the pieces, the sticks, and putting on the bag and the bagpipe reeds, the drone reeds, the chanter reed, setting it all up with Tone Protectors and everything.

12:00 And that’s a two-part series. And then I also did it live. I did a YouTube live where I did the whole process in front of the world. I’m not going to set up a video for this one, but I’m going to do the same thing.

12:07 So here we have the bass drone. Bass drone has three sections, the bottom section, the middle section and the top section. And when you tune, you move this up and down, and then the stock is going to go into the bag, and the drone reed would go here. So put that together. Beautiful. I just love that look, all the way from the reflective, beautiful nickel shiny top.

12:27 Comparing Modern & Vintage Bagpipes – How craftsmanship has evolved

12:39 You have the cord holders here for the drone cords, this beading and combing. And then they call this type of ferrule beaded and capped. So the reason it’s beaded and capped is, you see this little, come on now, focus on it. There you go. So that’s the bead, that little ridge there, and capped means that the metal goes around the bottom. You’ll see some ferrules which are just a tube of metal, they don’t have the lip that comes around the bottom, so you just see exposed wood there, and they don’t have the bead. So this is really a nice extra feature of these particular pipes made by R.G. Hardie.

13:24 If you look, this is also beaded and capped on the bottom of the middle section, but the stock, you can see, is beaded but it’s not capped, so it’s just wood there, and that is a really nice join. So you don’t want that cap typically, because you want this to be able to come in all the way flush and get a good, close connection there. So there’s the bass drone, and then there’s just a few more things to open in here.

14:07 All right, here we go. Boom, all in one piece. Here is a tenor drone. Beautiful. So same exact style as the bass drone. The bass drone has this extra section here, three sections, and a stock, and the tenor drone just has bottom and top. Beautiful. And if you look through, look it up to the light, it just is very, very nice in there. Hard to see, but extremely smooth, glasslike in there. That’s great. And you look in the bottom section, yep, same thing there. I don’t know if you can see that, but really, really nice and shiny all the way through. That is what I’m looking for, beautifully machined inside, smooth, no roughness.

14:41 Checking Internal Machining & Smoothness – A sign of quality bagpipes

14:52 Now, there’s some really, really good sounding old bagpipes, but in my experience a lot of old bagpipes, they have issues. They just didn’t have the precision of tooling back in those days. And I know that there are fantastic sets of bagpipes that are really old. I know of one famous bagpiper who’s got a set of 1899 Hendersons, 126 years old now, and they sound fantastic.

15:18 But the issue with the older pipes is that over time things can happen to the wood, you know, warping and cracking and chipping and all that sort of thing. But also there’s a range of qualities that you get in those older pipes. There are some great, great sets, and there are some sets that are not so good.

15:42 So a beautiful thing about these new sets of pipes is these companies like R.G. Hardie, they have the modern tooling and the modern technology, and they also have the connection to history. And I think it’s a great combination of the craftsmanship of the old pipe makers and being true to that tradition and using the best tools that we have to make sure your pipes are perfect.

15:54 Why Precision Machining Matters – Stability, tuning, and longevity

16:13 And these pipes look absolutely perfect and beautiful. All right, so there’s the other tenor drone. Two tenors are identical. Let’s get that stock on there. Yep, two tenors identical. Beautiful. Here’s your bass drone, really nice. And then there’s only one more thing, and then there’s our blowpipe. There’s only one more thing in the case, and that is a stock, and that’s the chanter stock.

16:37 Final Look at the Full Set – All components laid out before assembly

16:44 So the chanter stock is included with the set when you buy a set of bagpipes that are sticks only. So there it is, beautiful chanter stock. So there it is. These are the R.G. Hardie O2AB. AB means African Blackwood. They’re not the plastic ones, these are wood, and the O2 is this beautiful model with the nickel ferrules and caps, beaded and capped on the ferrules, and this very nice African Blackwood projecting out. So a beautiful set of pipes.

17:31 I’ll take some pictures when they are all ready to go, but this piper is going to be getting a Bannatyne Hybrid Pipe Bag. I think he chose the Willie McCallum style, black drone cords, black on black bag cover, and then going to get them all set up with amazing Ezeedrone Combo drone reeds, Tone Protector, you name it. So there it is. How cool. I wasn’t expecting to go live today or to film a video today, but wanted to share with you this cool thing about this great set of bagpipes. So if you are interested in bagpipes and getting a set, reach out to me through my website, BagpipeLessons.com.

18:11 Where to Get Your Own Bagpipes – Available sets & custom orders

18:12 I do have bagpipes for sale on the site. I’m going to be adding some more sets in the next few weeks, and I really think this is a great set. So I’m going to be looking at adding some options, different price range, different styles to the website. I had a great conversation with Alastair Dunn, who’s the head guy over there at R.G. Hardie in Scotland, and they’ve got some really cool things that they’ve been working on, some new ways of doing stuff and some new styles.

18:44 And looking forward to seeing those bagpipes and getting those up on the website. Thanks again for watching, and if you like this video, you know, it’s what everybody says, subscribe to my channel, hit the little bell to get notified when I put new videos up here. It’s a new year and I’m going to be doing more of this, and I thank you for your support. So until next time, happy piping.