As it happens, I recently acquired a MM Shire Hobbit and I also noticed a bit of a gurgle. I've only smoked it a couple of times and am reserving judgement until iI've used it a bit more. If nothing else works for you, you might try something like Nording Keystones in it. These can help keep a non-filtered pipe drier, but the improvement is modest in my experience. I really dislike a wet smoke, so the majority of my pipes are filtered. I find paper filters to be useless and go with balsa and charcoal filters.