Scott Dorsey wrote:

You don't need any sound reinforcement
with the highland pipes.

I have an annual gig mixing monitors for the mainstage of a 3 day Irish Music
Festival, & I've noticed an awful lot of what can I suppose best be described as
GenX Irish Rock Bands...twenty-something-yearold guys with an equal respect for
traditional Irish folk music & post-Nirvana grunge rock. Typical instrumentation
is electric guitar, electric bass, drumkit, plus 2 or 3 guys on the more
traditional instruments: button accordion, fiddle, mandola, Uilleann pipes,
Highland pipes, banjo, etc.

When the SVT & the blackface Twin get crankin' you'd better believe the Highland
pipes need some help. If I'm lucky, the guy's already got some kinda mic already
attached/installed (...not that the audience listening to close-miked pipes is
particularly lucky). Otherwise I park an SM58 on a tall boom & let the player
stand wherever he wants.

I have not see any good way of miking the Uilleann pipes for PA. Most folks
put a single mike between the performer's legs, pointed up, and this does
not work worth a damn.

I usually put a pair of dynamic mics on short boom stands on either side of the
piper, parallel to the floor facing inwards maybe 8" from the chair. Most of the
players will then grab them and move them to taste, but even if they don't the
results sound good & they don't feedback into the wedges.

/Bob Ross