 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Roger Aldridge
Date: 2007-12-13 14:23
I've been curious about the Vandoren Black Master reed. It has a different cut from most reeds used on French-style mouthpieces. However, it still works reasonably well....unlike the Vandoren White Master. The Black Master has a slightly shorter vamp length and the reed is narrower than a V12 (as an example).
The Black Master is well matched to the facing design of Ralph Morgan soprano clarinet mouthpieces. If one does a side-by-side comparison of a Morgan to, say, a Grabner it's easy to see noticable differences between their design. Morgan has a shorter window length and the tip width is narrower. With this in mind, it seems to me that Black Master can be an especially good reed to use on Morgan mouthpieces.
Another thing I'm curious about is how similar the Black Master profile is to a Morre. It appears to me that Black Master has a thicker cut than V12.
When I have a chance I'll try Black Master on my Grabner pieces and see how it works.
Roger
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2007-12-13 16:22
I tried #3 Black Master on my Grabner AW(when I played it) and it felt like #4.5 and it didn't have as big sound as regular French cut reeds. My teacher used to use them on a Viotto German mouthpiece with string just so he could get jobs in Holland when he lived there and studied with George Pieterson. But after he came back to Iceland he started using first Bay mouthpieces and then Grabner both with V-12 reeds and regular ligatures like Vandoren optimum and Leather. All the players here in Iceland no matter if they studied in Vienna with Rudolf Jettel,Alfred Prinz,Peter Schmidl,in Holland with Herman Braune,and had to make their own reeds and playing on different German mouthpieces all change when they come back to Iceland to a standard French mouthpieces and reeds. Maybe the main reason is that the leading conductors of the Icelandic Symphony orchestra have always liked the English/French school of clarinet playing. So you don't blend very well if you play on Buffet clarinets and standard French setup in Holland playing with players playing on Wurlitzer and also the Wurlitzer player wouldn't blend very well with players here in Iceland.
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Author: graham
Date: 2007-12-14 07:11
They work well on my relayed Hawkes & Sons mouthpiece, and most other reeds are too reedy on this mouthpiece. I think the predominent characteristic is "smooth" but they also sound fairly light. My mouthpiece has not got a short window, nor, apparently, a short facing. Nor is it small in any other way. But, everything works fine.
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Author: fontan29
Date: 2007-12-15 14:32
My professor gave me a blackmaster to try once on my Vandoren 5RV Lyre Profile 13 mouthpiece and it was awesome....one of the best reeds I ever used. I bought a few boxes and found some that worked and some that didn't. The ones that did work with my Vandoren were great.
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