The joys and dangers of Ebay pipes

[OC Richard]

I really like Atherton's pipes. I really dislike the fake ivory and aluminum. I know I should care more about the sound, but I also know he has had both silver and holly sets up, and while I missed out on those, I'm waiting to see if anything like that ever comes back up.

A guy in my band recently got full imitation ivory Athertons (the MacDougall model) and I have to say the imitation ivory is very nice.

Naill and Atherton (and perhaps others too) can do a thing where they discolour the plastic in a way that makes it look very much like real ivory, where the high points are darkened and the low points stay the pure ivory colour.

(Atherton "aged" imitation ivory)



Personally I don't like the pure cream-coloured plastic they use nowadays. I have two sets, one a 1940s Stark that's just wood with nickel rings and ferrules, and a 1940s supposed Lawrie with nickel ferrules and catalin rings (which have darkened to a glorious dark orange

My set and two other nearly identical sets all said to be made by Lawrie in the 1940s during a supposed period when they switched to rolled seamed ferrules. (The set to left has a replacement bass bottom, my set to centre has a replacement bass midsection.)



About aluminium, I had a Dunbar set full engraved aluminium and you could see those gleaming in the sun all across the field! People would come up and ask "how did you get the silver so bright?" and I would show them the aluminium and let them hold the pipes to see how lightweight they were. People would ask "how often do you have to polish them?" and I would say "never".

I played this set for years in the California and Nevada sun and Scottish rain and never polished them once. The only thing I would do was wipe off my fingerprints with the towel that's always in my pipe case, once in a while.

[OC Richard]

Here's a set where I'm going to grab some popcorn and watch the bidding.

Glorious silver & imitation ivory Gillanders & McLeod

https://www.ebay.com/itm/27493406063...IAAOSwBDRhM6n0

Back in the 1980s a guy in the band bought a new silver & ivory set just like this and the sound was wonderful.

He told me that old Bob Gillanders did the engraving himself, while sitting in front of the telly at night!

[OC Richard]

And here's an obviously Pakistani set, though with a Scottish-made chanter inserted.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/32477841891...0AAOSwcLphL~wc

All I can make out from the stamp is "O".

If we knew what letter was before or after the O, or how many letters total there were and in which place the O was, we would probably know.

For example

_ _ _ _ _ O _

could be MacLEOD but

_ O _ _ _ _


could be FORFAR.