The joys and dangers of Ebay pipes

[OC Richard]

Here are 2004 Kintails, a big chip in one of the mounts, here in the USA under $800 including shipping.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/2004-Kintai...wAAOSwJX5f9Lk5

What concerns me a bit, in addition to the chip in the mount, is that I don't know how Kintails of that period sound and play.

I'm familiar with 1980s Kintails, because my Pipe Major plays a mid-1980s silver & ivory Kintail which has an amazing tone with a powerful bass. His backup set is a Catalin-mounted Kintail also from the mid-1980s which he picked up cheap on Ebay, and which sounds exactly the same as his silver & ivory Kintails.

But I haven't knowingly heard a Kintail from the 2000s.

This next bagpipe listing is a head-scratcher with several red flags, one being the seller has zero feedback, the other that the seller obviously knows nothing about bagpipes because 1) his description has bagpipe parts misspelled and 2) his description doesn't match the bagpipe seen in the photos.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/RG-Hardie-N...4AAOSwOCRgHFct

So he says "plain combined" when he means is "plain combed". The combing on bagpipes (combing like combing your hair) is the pattern of tiny grooves, called combing because it's done with a tool that resembles a comb.

Thing is, the bagpipes in the photos aren't plain combed, they're "fully combed and beaded" (a bead being between two areas of combing).

Then he says the pipes have "beaded nickle furnels" when he means "beaded nickel ferrules".

But the bagpipes in the photos have non-beaded or un-beaded ferrules.

Another thing is that he states the bagpipes are African blackwood but from the nice closeup photos (for which I'm grateful) the pipes look like they're made from polypenco/delrin rather than wood.

Speaking of head-scratchers, here's a Pakistani bagpipe where the seller knows it's a Pakistani bagpipe and yet has them priced absurdly high

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Pak...gAAOSwwfdfohHi

Several years ago I got a catalogue from a Pakistani pipemaker, that kind of bagpipe is the least expensive one they make, they called it "cheap quality" and they were $40.

Something to keep in mind when people play hundreds of dollars for a Pakistani bagpipe!