Sick from/of testing reeds, Bruce Lazeroff creates BelloReed for better health and bagpipe performance

Bruce Lazeroff was sick of and from testing reeds. Figuratively and literally.

As the pipe-major of the An Còrr Pipe Band from Wilmington, Delaware, Lazeroff, like any pipe section leader, was responsible for trying and selecting dozens of chanter and drone reeds every year.

Like the highly successful EBellaire he invented and launched in 2023 as the first commercially available mobile air supply, allowing pipers to play without using their lungs, Lazeroff’s new BelloReed was also born of necessity.

Sick of getting sick from all that reed testing by mouth, he sought to develop a product that would both mitigate the risk of illness and accurately measure each reed’s strength.

“The BelloReed initially grew out of my need to stop getting sick after each band practice,” Lazeroff said. “Selfish, I know, but I often found myself setting chanter and drone reeds by directly blowing on them, making an adjustment, then moving on to the next player. By the end of the practice session, I had inoculated myself with 12 distinct biomes, each full of new and interesting viruses and bacteria. I was constantly fighting some infection.”

Lazeroff looked for a solution, but existing products had standard connection diameters and could not accommodate the various diameters of drone or chanter tenons, the hemped parts that connect to the stock.

“The BelloReed provides a truer sense of the reed’s characteristics than standard mouth-blowing, and a pressure gauge, you get real data to apply to your work with each piper.” – Bruce Lazeroff

“I cast about for a tool that I could use to select reeds of specific strengths for band members,” he said. “The problem is that each of them presented a chanter that has a different hemp thickness, making the standard fixed diameter reed testers available in the current market – a pain to use as you needed to constantly add or remove hemp for each chanter or drone use.”

Like the inventor he is, Lazeroff sought to create a safer way to adjust reeds that was easily adaptable to any chanter or drone tenon thickness and could accept a pressure gauge to directly measure reed strength.

The result is the BelloReed, which Lazeroff launched in early 2026. The product comprises an oval mouthpiece for better stability in the mouth, a disconnect fitting that allows a pressure gauge to be added or removed, as needed, and a clamping base that accepts hemped tenons between 19 and 23 mm.

He said that pipers and reedmakers testing reeds simply twist the product to create an airtight seal, allowing various pipe chanters to be played “almost as comfortably as a practice chanter. It provides a truer sense of the reed’s characteristics than standard mouth-blowing, and with the addition of the pressure gauge, you get real data to apply to your work with each piper.”

His personal technique is to calibrate drones by using the pressure gauge to adjust each drone reed to shut off at a certain pressure point. With the pressure gauge and an easy-fit to virtually any drone or chanter tenon, the result, he claims, is “a repeatable process to help set up each piper’s instrument quickly and with assurance that their air use is efficient.”

A version of the product called the BelloReed Ultra determines the optimal pressure of a chanter reed with the drones plugged by using a gauge manometer adapter.

“Once the three drones are set up this way, the entire instrument can be tested with confidence that all the reeds are in the same ballpark,” he added. “The final adjustments from here are incremental. Everyone is amazed at how much more manageable their bagpipe becomes once the drones are calibrated.”

Like many inventions, the first necessity (avoiding illness) that prompted the BelloReed led to an unexpected additional benefit: the potential to improve a bagpipe’s stability and more effectively reach its optimal consistency.

Lazeroff has trademarked the BelloReed name and has applied for patents.

The product is offered in three configurations: BelloReed Basic (USD$80), BelloReed Deluxe (USD$114), and BelloReed Ultra (USD$140), and various kits to upgrade from the Basic edition later.