Well, not exactly! Cane reeds are said to be rich and full in sound but temperamental and require constant maintenance.
Synthetic, or carbon fiber reeds are available for your drones, and I have EzDrone tenors and a Kinnaird Bass, which I just swapped out for my old inverted EzDrone Bass. I switched back because I was having a bit of trouble with my tenor drones tuning high on the pins and since I didn't have a lot of time or experience to deal with that I went back to the EzDrone.
Chanter reeds however are always cane and I know with the cane chanter reed in my pipes I have been fiddling with them off and on since I started playing. I have gone through probably 3 or 4 reeds since I started on the pipes, and I just put a new reed in last week. Each reed has different strengths and you have to either, poke, scrape or pinch them to get good sound from them.
I don't have a great deal of experience with chanter reeds but I have enough on hand to experiment, and quite likely ruin a few in the process, but that is how you learn right? Good thing they are not terribly expensive (about $10 each) but when you have a good reed you hate to ruin it.
I have assembled a reed kit which consists of a, xacto knife, mandrel (for poking) some dental rubber bands. That is pretty much all you need to pinch, scrape and poke a reed. When I have time I'll post some pictures of a chanter reed and its various parts.
For the last 4 or 5 weeks I've been able to practice pretty regularly, and that has had a positive impact on the sound of my pipes, the more you play the better the pipes perform. It has been fun to play all of the old tunes I know, and the new jigs I'm learning, although I'm playing the jigs very slowly right now, in time as my fingering improves I'll be able to bring them up to speed.
