Gibson Bagpipes Inc. was established in June of 1978 after Jerry decided to turn his Engineering talents towards producing a good sounding instrument.

Many man hours and thousands of dollars of materials, tooling and experimentation have been invested to produce a high quality, good sounding instrument. There are many factors that are involved in the design of a fine woodwind instrument and the many variables include bore sizes and openings, contours, tapers, thickness of material, types of material, bore lengths and hole placement. To maintain the production of a high quality product takes a combination of precision machinery and the skill and dedication of highly trained craftsmen.

All Gibson employees are highly skilled craftsman with many years of wood turning experience. Each craftsman has a specific product in his care and has specialized with all the custom tooling needed to produce that part.  Having one person familiar with a specific part of the bagpipe and its specifications ensures efficiency and accuracy. A very important consideration when purchasing a high quality product is what kind of tooling and machinery the company is using.

The key word here is "repeatability". Each part must be produced exactly as the one before it. The "ONLY" way to ensure this is to use high quality custom machinery and precision jigs that can hold close tolerances. The days of using a Wood lathe are gone as it would be impossible to maintain close tolerances for reproducing exact blueprint specifications and dimensions!

At Gibson Bagpipe Inc., only Metal lathes are used, allowing the operator to cut in very small increments and produce very accurate, straight bores. This assures accuracy and keeps the piece concentric. You can't do that with a wood chisel that is used when pipes are 'hand' made.

Quality control is another very important issue in bagpipe production. At Gibson Bagpipes each part is checked and inspected with Digital Micrometers and custom gauges. All Gibson products are made to close tolerance specifications. 

A final note on Computer Numerical Controlled Lathes. (CNC) We at Gibson Bagpipes do have a CNC  4 axis lathe  but we only use it for plastic and metal parts. This type of equipment is not used at Gibson Bagpipe in the manufacturing process as the African Blackwood does not lend itself very well to automated machining. The wood often has cavities and rough surfaces which are not desirable for producing an even, smooth surface that is also concentric.   At Gibson Bagpipes Inc.,   "close is not good enough". It has to be dead accurate to pass quality control inspection. One last thing we would like to mention. There are many custom made tools and fixtures that we use to produce our fine quality parts. They are too numerous to show here, but you are more than welcome to visit the shop anytime.

Gibson pipes are based and designed on a exceptional set of MacDougal pipes owned by the Late Capt John Maclellan, now played by his son Colin. Jerry knew of this set of MacDougal’s well from his tenure as a piper in the 1^st  Bn. Seaforth's in Gibraltar Where John Maclellan was RSM.  (Regimental sergeant major)

In 1984 Jerry was able to meet up with Colin and spend several weekends analyzing and duplicating this extremely rare and fine set of MacDougal pipes. There were several very unusual features to this bagpipe which made it sound the way it did. Jerry had already also measured several other sets of MacDougal’s (11 sets) including MacDougal’s of Aberfeldy as well as MacDougal’s of Breadalbane. A common feature of this particular bagpipe was the amazing umbrella of sound that literally surrounded you. The drones were not just steady but  had exceptional depth as well as breadth of  sound even for a set  of MacDougal’s, with outstanding harmonics of chanter to drones as well as blend of tenors to bass drone, with fine line tuning.

It takes real skill to turn raw product like these blanks into something like the products shown above that will give you years of listening pleasure.