Klarinet Archive - Posting 000234.txt from 1996/05

From: Mike Abbott <HinotesInc@-----.COM>
Subj: Zonda Reeds- All the answers- I hope! (long)
Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 16:01:10 -0400

HiNotes is extremely grateful to all of you who have sent us E-mail in the
past few days. Your enthusiasm and excitement about Zonda is tremendously
gratifying, and I have been blown away by the number of you who have wished
us success, and in such a heartfelt manner. We received a lot of questions
about Zonda, and the most efficient way to answer them all is in one big
posting, so please don t be insulted if you don t get personal E-mail from
me- we are trying to respond to those messages that need individual
attention.

Regarding our free reed offer- an enormous shipment has just landed, and it
needs to clear customs, get inventoried here, and then we test it for quality
internally and send it to our Board of Advisors for further evaluation,
before we offer it for sale (or free). This whole process might take up to
three weeks! This is why I was reluctant to make the offer now- I don t want
to create anticipation I can t satisfy. When we get the thousands of
responses we expect, we ll get them back to you as soon as we can, but it
could be a Please allow 4 weeks for delivery situation, we just don t know.
We ll be working weekends (like now) to expedite things.

When we do make the free offer, we want to send you reeds that will hopefully
work! To do this, we need to know what you re using now, and I d like
_complete_ info on your setup. More on that when the time comes. Some of you
are responding now, and giving us an address, but no info on what you play,
so that doesn t help us. We d like to save you the time, effort and money
involved with experimenting to find your correct strength if we can.

As far as strengths go, here s the story. As a thick blank reed, we wanted to
grade as close as possible to the most popular thick blank reed being used
now- the X-15.......B-52? You know the one I mean! :) As many of you have
testified here, that s like hitting a moving target. We bought a whole bunch
of them, played them, tested them, and established a scale we think is close
to what the manufacturer intended. Some of you think Zonda reeds are harder
than that, some softer- we hope to be pretty close, but it will depend some
on your setup. The most frequent comment we get about our reeds is that they
are CONSISTENT, and almost all the reeds in the box play alike. We have tried
very hard to achieve this, and one big reason is we have developed a
proprietary new strength grading machine that is very accurate. We are
grading our production into 20 different sub-strengths. It would be a major
problem for our retail partners to stock 20 different strengths of reeds
(especially across a complete family of reeds), and a huge packaging expense
for us to produce all those boxes. Our initial solution was to combine
sub-strengths into 6 popular sizes, 2 to 4.5. However, we have a new idea,
and are putting it into practice on our current production- since we use a
lot number on each package, we are going to append a sub-strength designation
onto our current lot number. This will allow us to know exactly the strength
of the reeds inside, and if you wish to fine tune your preference, you can do
so- if you played P and they were a little soft, get Q the next time. If
you order your reeds directly from us, we will support this, but many
retailers will still think of a 3 is a 3 is a 3, since the box itself will
still say 3 . Once again, this is a plan we are putting into place- we have
to redo our production methods to achieve it, and you won t see it on final
product for a few months.

Where do I buy Zonda reeds? We are building our local dealer network in
the US and Canada- if you don t see it, please ask them to contact us. We
have a few dealers doing a great job for us, but most of our sales are
direct. Many of the larger retailers we already know from Powell Flutes, and
they are evaluating the reeds in-house. This can take some time in a large
company, so once again, please help us get their attention. We intend to do
international business, and have established distributors in some countries,
but not in others. Please E-mail me directly if you have international
interests and I ll fill you in as best as I can. If you wish to purchase
directly from us, please call HiNotes at 617-894-2121, dial ext. 116. You ll
probably speak to Mark Spuria, who is in charge of retail sales here- he s
quite a good clarinetist (7 years principal with the Singapore Symphony
Orchestra).

How much do they cost??? Zonda Reeds have a list price of $ 13.95 for a
box of 5 reeds. We sell them directly for: 1-2 boxes, $ 13.95 ea.; 3-5
boxes, 10% off, or $ 12.56 ea.; 6-11 boxes, 15% off, or $ 11.86 ea.; and 12
or more boxes, 20% off, or $ 11.16 each. These prices include shipping, and
we add 5% tax if you re in Massachusetts. If this seems expensive, we hope
you will evaluate your current brand- how many good reeds do you get per box,
and what does each good reed actually cost you? How much time do you spend
working reeds to make them play right? We think the effective cost per good
reed makes Zonda a more affordable choice for many players.

What about saxophone and other clarinet reeds? We will be making saxophone
and bass clarinet reeds. We made a decision very early to concentrate on
clarinet reed development first. We want to be sure we can produce clarinet
reeds in quantity, with quality, before we add other reeds to the Zonda line.
I would expect to see alto and tenor sax reeds in Jan 97, with others to
follow. By the way, I m having fantastic success with Zonda clarinet reeds on
soprano sax.

What about raw cane? We haven t ruled it out, but it is not on the drawing
board right now to market cane for clarinet. Zonda reeds are manufactured in
Argentina and sent here pre-packaged, so I only have small quantities of
clarinet cane here for product development. We will introduce raw cane for
double reeds fairly soon.

What about these new pads? Not for sale yet, we re shooting for an
introduction at the OK Clarinet Symposium next month. They ll be called
Gold-Seal Pads by Powell . They are a resonator pad for clarinet based on a
Powell Flutes patent, and they sound great. We re in production on an initial
run which we re going to distribute to top repair professionals for testing,
a few of whom are on this list. More on that later.

How do we contact HiNotes? HiNotes, Inc., 241 Crescent St., Waltham, MA
02154-3425
phone 617-894-2121 fax 617-647-4125.

As far as background information goes, most of the following is from a June
96 The Music Trades article that should fill in a lot of the other missing
pieces people have been asking about:

Unknown to most woodwind players, some of the world s finest reed cane is
being grown in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, on land converted from
century-old vineyards. Almost twenty years ago, Juan Gonzalez, a symphonic
oboist and professor at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Argentina s most
prestigious music school, began cultivating cane for his own use. Demand for
this cane spread to his students and colleagues, and he finally began a
company to commercially grow cane. Today they have five plantations,
including the largest single cane plantation in the world, which have
provided cane for many years to several of the world s largest reed
manufacturers. Unfortunately, this cane is usually mixed with cane from
France and Spain, including a great deal of wild cane, and generally is then
marketed as French cane from the Var Valley. These plantations utilize
agricultural techniques unique to cane growers to produce cane that is
straight, clear, and of uniform dimensions.

In a joint effort with HiNotes, Inc. of Waltham, MA, a new world-class reed
line, Zonda Hand Select Reeds, is being produced from the best of this cane
and marketed internationally. Zonda reeds are named after the hot wind which
races through the nearby Zonda Pass in the Andes Mountains, whipping the cane
back and forth, and strengthening the fibers. Zonda reeds are produced in
Argentina, and are exclusively distributed worldwide by HiNotes, which
specializes in the distribution of patented or proprietary music accessories.

This new venture was initiated by Gerardo Discepolo, Director of Marketing at
Verne Q. Powell Flutes. A native of Argentina, Discepolo knew Professor
Gonzalez from his days as a student at UNC, and understood the quality of the
cane that was being produced there. In order to help popularize Argentinean
cane, he introduced the Gonzalez family to Steven Wasser, the owner of Powell
Flutes, who in turn started HiNotes in order to bring these reeds to market.
Wasser, a clarinetist himself, set as his goal the production of the finest
reed in the world, and brought in Michael Abbott, a professional woodwind
player with many years of music retail experience, as General Manager of
HiNotes.

There are several important qualities which distinguish Zonda reeds. First
and foremost is the quality of the cane itself. No pesticides are ever used
in the production of Zonda cane, and organic fertilizer is used whenever
possible. Argendonax grows the cane in rows that are 10 meters apart in order
to let the sun fully reach the cane, because cane can reach heights of 30
feet. This technique is not a very efficient use of this valuable land, so
the space between the rows of cane is used to grow melons and asparagus.
Adjoining the cane fields are vineyards and plum arbors. Experience has
taught that irrigation must be carefully controlled, one of the major
drawbacks of wild cane. After harvesting, the cane is naturally aged- no kiln
drying is ever used.

Using the highest hand selection standards at every step, the cane undergoes
a manufacturing process that includes marking the orientation of the growth
of the cane so that the tip of the reed is cut from the top of the blank, a
crucial step which is omitted by many reed manufacturers. The dimensions of
the reed blanks are carefully controlled, with an allowable thickness
deviation of only .07mm from the norm, a much higher standard than is used by
other manufacturers. To insure consistency from reed to reed, new machinery
has been developed to measure and grade the reeds for strength, and all reed
manufacturing templates are precisely made at Powell Flutes CNC machining
center.

Many commercial reeds are unbalanced, with one side heavier than the other.
Care is taken with Zonda reeds to have a balanced reed which is very
free-blowing and requires very little effort to play in all registers. The
cut of the Zonda reed does not use a scoreline across the middle of the reed.
This extra cut is generally for cosmetic reasons only, as it serves to
distract the eye from any discrepancies in the cut of the reed. The handcut
look of Zonda reeds allows the player to truly evaluate the accuracy of the
cutting process.

Zonda is the only reed with a serial number- every box of Zonda reeds
prominently displays a lot number containing its plantation and vintage, a
practice adopted from the wine industry. No lot of reeds is released to the
public without random play-testing by the Zonda Board of Advisors. This group
of top international artists is comprised of Ricardo Morales, New York
Metropolitan Opera; Richard Lesser, Israel Philharmonic; Emma Johnson,
soloist from Great Britain; Luis Rossi, famous clarinetist and clarinet
maker; and Richard MacDowell, professor at the Univ. of Texas-Austin. Not
only did these artists consult in the development of the Zonda design, but
they continue to serve as a part of the quality control system as well.

Zonda reeds are packaged in a patent pending new box with advantages for both
the player and the music store. This package design was selected for use in
the NAMM model store in Anaheim. By lifting the front cover of the box,
clarinetists can inspect the reeds before they buy them, while a seal insures
the integrity of the contents. The reeds are housed in a secure carrying case
which uses the geometry of the reed to hold it in place. For retailers, all
HiNotes products have UPC codes, and to make inventory easy, the reed boxes
include the strength on all package faces. The Zonda package was designed to
offer flexible display options, including fitting into standard guitar string
fixtures.

One of the most important goals in the development of Zonda Reeds was to
offer significant financial benefits to the clarinetist by increasing the
ratio of playable reeds in a box. Most clarinetists get only one or two good
reeds in a box of ten, and HiNotes aim is to provide clarinetists as many
good reeds in a box of 5 as they currently get in a box of 10.

For further information, please contact Mike Abbott, gen. mgr. 617-894-2121
ext. 109.