Wire Bridle for Reeds

Fergmaun · Post by **Fergmaun** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 8:56 am

What is the best wire for bridle as used by Andreas Rogge.

1) Tinned copper wire
2) Bare copper wire

Is the best size 0.4 mm 27 swg or 0.45 mm 26 swg.

All the best

Cayden · Post by **Cayden** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 9:03 am

I have several pupils who have NPU practice sets on loan, all of these have wire bridles. These yokes are practically unadjustable and they are not at all a good idea in my experience.

Fergmaun · Post by **Fergmaun** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 10:18 am

Hello Peter

I can adjust the wire bridle on my Rogge reeds for my D, C and B chanters and regs.

If the reed lips is to open you can move the bridle down or if the reed lips is to closed just move the bridle up.

If the wire bridle is placed after the binding you can still move the bridle to open the lips but you can't move the brildle down to close lips. To do this close the lips a wee bit you need to use fine nosed pliers and gently squeeze the front and back of bridle.

All the best

AlanB · Post by **AlanB** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 10:24 am

Fergus,
I'm with Pete here. They tend to warp easily and are not as subtly changeable as a trad strip of metal (copper). And the pushing of the bridle up and down hastens the end of a good reed. Look at

http://home.wxs.nl/~ejthart/Reed/reed.html for good bridle sense!

Alan

Cayden · Post by **Cayden** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 10:44 am

fergus.maunsell wrote:Hello Peter

If the reed lips is to open you can move the bridle down or if the reed lips is to closed just move the bridle up.

All the best

I have the illusion maybe that I am sort of aware how to adjust a bridle, for my own reeds i would not move the bridle up or down for adjustment [the reeds have one spot they particularly fancy for the reed to sit for best performance]. On the practice chanter reeds [one particulartly is badly in need of adjusting] moving the bridle just doesn't do the business, noises announcing iminent cracking of reed aside and they cause boundless frustration.

jqpublick · Post by **jqpublick** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 10:53 am

Peter Laban wrote: noises announcing iminent cracking of reed

What kind of noises, Peter? This may be a bit silly, but could you describe those noises? 'Cos I for one don't have a clue how to tell.

Thanks,
Mark

Cayden · Post by **Cayden** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 10:58 am

the sort of noises cane makes when cracking, being pushed to the limit?

boyd · Post by **boyd** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 11:05 am

The answer to Fergus' question is ... piano tuning wire, copper.

Ask the man himself and he'll tell you the gauge.

Its a design that definitely doesn't lend itself to frequent adjustments. If the reed and [wire] bridle end up in a place where they're happy and tuneful, I wouldn't touch them again. Better to have a couple of reeds than to keep adjusting a single reed.
Or just put the pipes away til the weather changes!
Don't laugh...I know a guy in Belfast who does that.

Boyd

AlanB · Post by **AlanB** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 11:46 am

Piano Wire!

I can just imagine sneaking up behind the reed with it on a dark night and *slllsshhh*. a finished reed!!

Alan

Fergmaun · Post by **Fergmaun** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 12:23 pm

http://www.wires.co.uk/acatalog/index.html web site is where I am going to get the bare copper wire as it is soft bare copper wire.

I measured the wire bridle on the reed and the size is 0.4 mm.

Antaine · Post by **Antaine** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 12:39 pm

my reeds from Bruce C use wire bridles...they're the happiest reeds I've got...ask him how he does it...

Kevin L. Rietmann · Post by **Kevin L. Rietmann** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 12:50 pm

I had a lot of reeds die from either not being tied on securely enough, or moving the bridles up and down - or both? At any rate I'm just making the stationary copper strip type now. It's every bit as sensitive to adjustment as shoving the things up and down, which I'd thought was the big advantage of a sliding bridle in the first place.
This copper piano wire is the winding on bass strings, right? Hobby shops have steel piano wire as well; harder than snot.

Tony · Post by **Tony** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 1:15 pm

Kevin L. Rietmann wrote:....This copper piano wire is the winding on bass strings, right? Hobby shops have steel piano wire as well; harder than snot.

I'm thinking you want soft (to medium) copper wire, not rigid steel music wire.

nwhitmer · Post by **nwhitmer** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 1:51 pm

There are many ways to skin a cat. Here is what works for me:

I use #24 galvanized wire for bridles, two times around the reed just above the winding. It's a light iron(?) wire used for picture hanging. I used to use copper or brass sheet but found myself cracking reeds too often.

#24 wire is not too stiff, and I squeeze it with pliers to alter the reed opening. I do not move it up or down on the reed. Moving a bridle up & down on the reed seems to have its own set of problems, one of which is: will the bridle stay where you want it to be?

#24 wire does not have the compressive power of bent copper or brass sheet. This method assumes that the assembled reed without the bridle has a tip opening not too far from what you want. By "not too far" I suppose I mean that a reed without a bridle shouldn't have a tip opening much more than 2 or 3 times the opening of the finished, adjusted reed. This is a bit of a guess, I've never tried to quantify this before.

A picture of a reed I made is at

http://www.lightlink.com/nwhitmer/reeds.html

Nick Whitmer

AlanB · Post by **AlanB** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 2:18 pm

Looking at the side view of this reed, you can note how where the tail is formed, the sides are thicker. This should be the case just above the binding where the bridle *should* sit (IMO), so the reed can accept more pressure without damage. If you shove the bridle up the reed or apply tension to a wire bridle where the sides are thinner, then the cane is more prone to tearing and cracking.

Alan (If you can guess what's in the background, you can have a free reed)