Bass Drone Reed - Highland Bagpipes

It's a replacement drone for the Cheap Pakistani bagpipes that are available on Ama,zon. The set I received as a gift came with a set of both "natural" and plastic reeds. Neither set included one that would fit into the bass drone tube. After taking some measurements I reproduced the part with a smaller end to go into the receiver. The actual vibrating reed part was cannibalized from the original, along with the rubber bands that hold it into place. There was a little post that was holding the reed in place onto the main body, this seems superfluous and impossible to print with any strength so was left off the design.

As always I uploaded the .blend file in case you want to do something else with it. Feel free to modify this further as needed and if it's not correct dimensions for one of these feel free to let me know what's wrong in the comments. If I stick with this instrument and get a better set one day, or get enough feedback I'll update it. Otherwise this is a low effort design with the idea being to get the things at least running/playable.

On the bright side, this can possibly be made into a nasty duck call or annoy your friends and family with it, it's like a much lower pitched dog squeeky toy outside of the actual instrument.

Your slicer may complain it's not watertight. I don't know what to tell you, it was all made with booleans and looks watertight to me. It sliced and printed okay from Cura despite the dire warnings about water tightness.

Other notes:

• Printed with 5 walls at like .1 mm so it's more or less solid.
• There's a little indent area where you're supposed to wrap a bunch of waxed twine/string or something . My pipes were still a little small on the inside so it wound up being not necessary. The PLA went in tight and formed a seal enough on its own to work.
• you could probably make a replacement reed for it out of like an old 2 litre soda bottle or a cheap cutting mat.
• I filed the flat area completely flat and used a small round needle file to slightly chamfer the bottom/front rounded edge on the reed hole to match the original. None of that might have been necessary.
• You have to move the reed around a bit to find the sweet spot where it sounds. I also had to prise mine up a bit as seen in the photo so it wouldn't immediately slap shut and close. This also might not be necessary or desirable, I really don't know. Feel free to tell me off in the comments.
• A good idea might be printing new bands to hold the reed in place out of TPU. I might do this once I'm done with this roll or PLA or the next.

Category: Music