The chanter consists of a black plastic pipe in which the electronics and the batteries are housed. In the upper end, the earphones are connected, and by doing so the chanter is also switched on. Almost any sort of Walkman stereo earphones with a 3.5mm plug will do. In the lower end, the batteries are inserted. The chanter runs on three 1.5V batteries of the sort used in watches (LR44, SR44 or similar 11.6 x 5.4mm). The lifetime is about 50 hours of playing. The power consumption without the earphones connected is negligible. You can use the earphone output to connect to a couple of self powered speakers or a mic input on a stereo, but that might decrease battery lifetime a bit, depending of the device you are connecting it to.

The contacts on the chanter are electrical and not mechanical, meaning that they do not have to be pressed down to achieve contact. The grip does not have to be any firmer than that on the pipe chanter. The contacts are about 3mm in diameter, and with their highest point slightly above the surface of the pipe in order to get a better feel for their positions. There is one control for the volume, and one for the sensitivity. Since the fingers sometimes can be very dry, causing them to become poor conductors, and sometimes quite sweaty, leaving a sweat film on the chanter short-circuiting the contacts, the sensitivity must be possible to set. Most of the time though, the setting of the sensitivity can be ignored.

If you want to shut it off briefly, just let go of the chanter and it will go silent until you start playing again. Worth mentioning is that there is no electrical "ground contact" on which a finger or any other part of the body has to rest on, or be connected to, whilst playing.

For a set level of volume, the volume of each note differ. For example, the low G has a higher volume than low A, and high A has the lowest volume of all notes. This is creating the characteristic birl, slur, and grip sound etc., and they will sound as crisp as on the pipes. The sound as such, if you have not listened to the samples, is somewhere in between the pipes and the ordinary practice chanter. Unlike on the ordinary practice chanter, you can play C naturals and F naturals if you like.

See the following fingering chart
.pdf

It is tuned in the same key as the GHB. The chanter is pitch alterable to be able to tune it to a CD on you stereo if you wish. The low A goes from 434Hz up to 481Hz in steps of 3Hz, with 466Hz as default. There is no drone sound.

On the circuit board there is an extremely accurate crystal oscillator timing the microprocessor. All the circuits and discrete components are surface mounted according to the latest technology, in order to guarantee a high quality. Very much effort has been put into securing that the electronic circuits are not damaged by ESD (=electrostatic discharge), that otherwise might occur when for example passing the chanter from one person to another.

The length of the pipe is 225mm and the diameter is 16mm. Despite the small dimensions this is a full-size practice chanter and the spacing of the contacts is the same as the spacing of the holes on a pipe chanter. The dimensions together with the low weight of approx. 50 grams, make this chanter very portable indeed.

Read the manual

  • .pdf