Okay, after about 2 months of waiting, my Kaba Gaida finally arrived in a box from Bulgaria, full of Bulgarian newspapers and magazine pages. I opened it, and boy, can you smell the goat on that bag -- I thought the Pakistani bagpipes I got were smelly, but this thing definitely smells.

Okay, I'm exaggerating... It's not a terrible smell, just a strong smell. But boy, is this instrument great! The bag is not sewn from pieces of leather, like most bagpipes, It's literally the whole skin of a goat, and there is a cow horn chanter-stock that has an animal face carved into it.

The pipes essentially came all set up and ready to play. I only had to attach the drone and chanter. I figured out how to tune it. It's in the key of D. The only problem I have is exactly what someone in another thread told me about -- These bagpipes are not tunes like others at all. In fact, they're limited to tuning. It looks like the drone wants to be G, and not much else. I can get G# and G-flat on the extreme tunings. It probably sounds right for Bulgarian music, but I won;t be able to play any of my other European folk tunes on it, so I'll have to learn some Bulgarian tunes.

One thing I definitely want to try out, and that is attempting to make plastic reeds for these. With the right kind of ingenuity, like EZ-drone style reeds, I should be able to make the drone more tunable so i can play my medieval european music, and then just re-tune it for Bulgarian music.

I attempted to play tunes that I knew, but it sounds like the tonic is actually one not below where I'm used to with other bagpips and recorders. Is that correct? I can play my usual music on it, but I have to move down a note for it to sound right.

The look of the pipes is well worth the price, though. They really look folky and ancient.