Bagpipes polarize.
You either tolerate them or you scream. But this guy didn’t just tolerate the concept. He spent thirty years hacking it.
Most pipe fans stick to the acoustic tradition. Not this UK hobbyist. He wanted to play rock gigs. The problem? Volume. You can’t fight a Marshall stack with goat skin and breath. Microphones don’t work well here, they just pick up the snare drum and scream back feedback at your monitor. It’s a messy signal path.
He had an idea.
Back in 1996. That’s when the tinkering started. He took an Irish Uilleann chanter—the melodic kind, not the war cry type—and ripped out the cane reed. He replaced it with carbon steel. Why?
Electromagnetism.
Steel moves magnets. Magnets induce current. Current makes sound.
“I knew that I would only be able sonically compete with an electric Guitar by fitting an electromagnetic pickup next steel reed,” he wrote.
It’s clever engineering born of desperation.
Standard bagpipes come in many shapes, from East Asia to the Persian Gulf, but the Uilleann pipes are specific. 18th century origin. You use a bellows at your waist. This pumps dry air through the pipes. It feels more like flute mechanics than the lung-bursting Scottish variety. Usually, they are considered mild. Melodic, even.
But this guy didn’t want mild.
He wanted Jimi Hendrix feedback.
And he got it. He just has to shove the instrument directly into the speaker cabinet. Turn the amp to eleven. Screech.
The look of the pipe is deceptive. The bag looks like traditional goat skin, a cosmetic nod to the past. Inside, however, is vinyl. The kind you find in cheap car seats. Durable. Air-tight. Unromantic.
The result isn’t a simulation. Guitarists stand behind him scratching their heads. The sound comes from an electric source, yes, but the phrasing, the breath control—it’s distinctly pipe.
It sounds like an electric instrument but isn’t.
That paradox is the whole point. You get distortion. You get pitch shifters. You get delay. But you also get the weird, warbling sustain of reeds vibrating against steel.
The full plans aren’t online. You won’t find a schematic PDF to print in your basement. He keeps the secrets. But he shares the songs.
“Guitarists at the back would thinking ‘You definitely can’t get an electric Guitar to sound like that!‘”
They’re right. You can’t. Because you’re still blowing into a pipe. Even if it’s plugged into a guitar amp. Even if the air is vinyl-contained and the sound is electric-induced.
He just keeps playing. And people crowd around to figure it out. They usually don’t.
The noise fills the room. And for once, the pipes don’t just ask to be loved or hated. They ask to be amplified.
Is that cheating? Or is it just evolution?
Who knows. He’s having fun.
