Unboxing: Blair Digital Chanter - Electronic Bagpipes

Unboxing a Blair Digital Chanter! This thing is COOL! Take a watch and see us unbox and play around with the newest bit of technology in the bagpipe universe! Many thanks to my friend Dave Barnett for letting me unbox this beauty.

There's a lot of talk about my birl! To see my particular birl style, click here:
7:20 Highland Wedding (with my up/down birl)

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[davidslobod]

I bought this chanter last year and love it. I can practice with headphones in the living room while my spouse is watching TV, and I can play it for hours without moisture worries. I adjusted the sensitivity into the negative range for each note which seems counterintuitive but embellishments are more clear this way. Yes it’s expensive but a great investment IMO.

[johnscott]

My wife bought me one for Christmas, I am absolutely in love with it. Just have to make sure I play my full size pipes as much as I did before.

[ruaraidhmcdonald-walker]

Haha, apparently the family have just bought me one for Christmas!! Thanks to this video for making me confident enough to want one given the expense!! What a great family!! Cheers for the review Matt.

[janejohnson]

I'm thinking about getting a Blair Chanter. It was nice to see you unboxing it. Thanks!

[Piper_demi.]

I have one of them, a Blair Digital chanter that I’ve got for Christmas, and it sounds great

[andrewmichael]

I like the idea of optical sensors! Years ago I had a Deger electronic Chanter. I even bought a Behringer 180 watt keyboard amp to play it through. The amp had some cool features. If I set the reverb & vibrato just right it sounded like a large Pipe band. :-)
I ended up selling the Deger. It had conductive contacts. I have very thick, dry skin & I was living in a dry climate, so, I had to rub copious amounts of EKG conductive gel into my fingers before each tune. Not good! By the end of a tune the gel would be drying & the Chanter would miss more & more grace notes, as I would play heavier & heavier handed to keep the main notes sounding.
If I had nice, pink, moist skin, I would probably still be using that Chanter.

[bryancampbell]

It does look amazing and the menu controls are an improvement over my Degerpipes. Might have to add this to the Christmas wish list :-)

[Missbagpipernorthwest]

You mentioned "balance" for individual sensitivity; I worked with this for more than 6 months and had no success. My solution may seem backwards, I had the Deger and needed to use resin to keep my fingers moist to establish a contact. I have gone back to the same thing for the Blair and it works. It's not a heavy resin that would impair or harm the note holes.

[jazzman]

It’s been years and years since I played my practice chanter before getting the Blair chanter a week ago, due to having a bit more dosh than usual. My fingers feel like they’re made of wood! Stiff as boards, they are. I find the birl hole to be that little bit lower than is comfortable for me, so it’s like learning all over again. I’m still a bit confused as to how to dial in the sensors so that I don’t have to lift my fingers too high. Is it lower, or higher numbers for lifting the fingers not so high? I can’t remember my playing being this bad lol. I think I’ll start with slow airs and marches and leave the strathspeys, reels and jigs for a while. Maybe having to lift my fingers high, will be good for me. One thing I love about this chanter though, is the sound quality. It’s absolutely superb! “Hector the Hero” sounds really good.

[Goetterdaemmerung]

It’s a great little thing to play on.

I’ll play it when it’s too late to use the “big” ones.

A little bit of trial and error is required when calibrating all the sensors, but that’s not really any big deal, it’s totally worth it in the end.

[fionahill-heaton]

Oh wow! Thats for me! I sail & bring a pocket chanter so I can still keep up with our pipe band tunes whilst on our boat. Got a cheaper e chanter which is ok, but the Blair is far superior. Thanks Matt!

[alrchaplain]

got sick and lost my breath. I used to play recorders. I am a Blair and my wife is a Taylor. We love the Scotts and Irish tunes. But I cant play wood wind or whistle any more. This just might be the trick. I had heard of the EWI but not an actual chanter. It help to have one such as you to look these things over and let us see what we might be getting into.

[johnnickpappanastos]

Awesome video and congrats to Mr. Barnett!! Looks like one of the more technologically advanced electro-chanters on the market. The smallpipes mode and built-in metronome are sweet! Needs more Cowbell tho.. ;)

[smudb]

This was a really good unboxing video. Very nice chanter. Just started to learn on a RG Hardie twist trap. Thank you for a very good channel😊.

[markgerber]

My Blair is an important part of my Training .It was the best investment I made next o my Pipes

[robertfogarty]

I own one of those I got it for my birthday and it’s fun to mess around with.
I also just passed my audition as a bagpiper for the pipe band I’m in and the Blair digital chanter helped me learn tunes quick

[Fabtech]

Another great unboxing Matt! Its nice to get a pro demo stuff like this, since I cant exactly walk down to the local music store and try them out for myself!

[Ordinaryfiveeight]

Hi Matt, yes... About difficulty in executing cleanly certain notes and movements... adjustment can indeed be made to adjust sensitivity but you move to negative values not positive values. Strangely that seems to be the fix. Hope this helps.

[rafikibubu]

Hope you don't mind my asking, I'm merely interested and intrigued ... do you play your birls in an Up-Down motion? Or are my eyes playing tricks on me? If so, that's a first ... never seen that before .. I'm fascinated.

[richardmalone]

A question. I love the sound of the pipes. I'm 65 and would love to learn to play. Am I kidding myself?