Klarinet Archive - Posting 000167.txt from 1998/10

From: "David B. Niethamer" <dnietham@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] swapping reeds between sax/clar.
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 21:47:17 -0400

On 10/1/98 12:24 PM, Merlin Williams wrote:

>Well, according to Ralph Morgan, for several years Vandoren bass clarinet
>and tenor saxes were cut using the same tooling. This resulted in less
>than optimum tenor reeds that had to be messed around with to work properly.

Having read a bit of this thread, I did a highly unscientific sample
today on the 4 reeds in the case of my bass clarinet student at U of
Richmond. He had 3 Vandoren Bass Clarinet reeds, and one Vandoren Tenor
reed (Java? - I thought that was a computer language - but I digress!)

The Bass Cl and Tenor Sax reeds had the same length of blank, and the
same profile (width at the butt and tip). The cut on the bass clarinet
reeds was longer than on the Java Tenor sax reed, and cut straight across
at the bottom of the cut (French cut?). The Java had a U shaped cut,
shorter than the Bass Cl reeds, and played a bit "darker", with less of
the reedy quality especially in the low register. The length of cut of
the Java reed matched the window length of the Vandoren B44 mouthpiece,
and the Bass clarinet reeds were longer. As someone who makes his reeds,
making the cut longer than the window of the mpc is in general not
helpful, at least for me. A reed cut properly to the length of the mpc
window is more stable for me.

What all this means is a mystery to me, since personal preference and
vagaries of reed strength and playability are what they are. Probably one
can find examples of each style of reed that work well - my student does.

David

David Niethamer
Principal Clarinet, Richmond Symphony
dnietham@-----.edu
http://members.aol.com/dbnclar1/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------