I recently switched from a straight .547 bore slide to a .525/.547 dual bore, and it was a choice I'm so happy I made. I'm interested in hearing whether other dual bore users choose to use a small or large shank leadpipe and why. I currently play with a small shank leadpipe with a 6 1/2 and that works well for me. But I'm curious to see other people's thought process behind their shank choice.

I've tried large shank with 525, but if you're going to do that, you might as well stick with straight 547. With my 525, I always use small shank. I use DE stuff, E/F cup with 4 shank.

I play a .525/547 from time to time with a DE F+/G5 cup/shank combination. Works nicely on that and .525 regular. Both were small shank.

I cut a .547 leadpipe short enough to fit in the .525 side, leaving it about 4inches long. It....was an experiment? I'll just use the .547 slide instead.

(all Edwards, fwiw)

I just switched recently. The 525/547 gives a lot more focus. I tried a few pipes but the one that works best is the Conn X though it is a ridiculous pipe for reasons I'll be enumerating shortly once I fix them. I like having two pipes around though; the other is a Conn 52 that I had threads added. The "X" is large shank, the 52 is small shank. With the small shank, I find that it works really well for anything commercial that I wouldn't be using the smaller horn for (or if I need to and wasn't made aware of it) and the large shank one gives me more focus than a 547 slide but is still quite broad enough for anything classical that I might be doing.

That all said, I tend to stick with the large shank for it since if I wanted something more commercial, I'd just use my small bore horn.

I’ve got large and small shank Shires Sauer pipes for my .525.