Hurrah! I just got my smallpipes back from EJ on Saturday. When I started playing them again, I noticed that he'd moved the bridle on the E drone so that it played in D, and I discovered that with minimal changes in bridle position, the drone can play not only D and E, but F# as well. This leaves me with the following drone configurations (in .abc chord notation):

[A,, E, A, D] for playing in A & D
[A,, D, A, D] & [A,, F#, A, D] for playing in D

Now I gotta find if I can monkey with it to get the A drones to play in G, and the alto D drone to play in C# or E. And do it without breaking any reeds. Still, I prefer to run with no more than 3 drones at any one time, because it gets to be too loud compared to the chanter.

I played my new competition set for some friends, and they really liked it. I think it was the pseudo-Classical flourishes in the tune. That bodes well for competition this season, I think.

I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere on Irish fiddle, though perhaps at the expense of mandolin. Oh well, I'll get caught up at some point.