 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: William Funk
Date: 1999-01-30 13:58
Am looking for advice and options on how to keep the reed in contact with the mouthpiece. On most reeds I find the edges pull away from the mpc after a while, allowing air to leak. I have tried soaking the whole reed, sanding the bottom until it is flat again, and putting grooves on the cane sile of the butt (to allow expansion). This problem occus on muliple boxes of reeds (V12s) and also on my tenor Saxophone (V16s, Hemkes). My son notices a similar problem on his tenor, but not so much on the alto or clarinet. Since this problem occurs over multiple boxes or reeds, different mouthpieces and different instruments, my guess is that this is caused by something I am doing with the reed (either in storage, preparation or playing) - but I could be wrong.
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Author: Al
Date: 1999-01-30 16:17
I'm really not aware of this promlem. I recall a reed manufactured many years ago with the brand name VIBRATOR. It had vertical parallel grooves cut into its butt (on the bark side). Your comment about cutting grooves reminded me about it. When you finish a playing session, remove the reed, press out the excess moisture and store the reed flat in one of the many reed cases on the market which are designed to do this.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 1999-02-01 17:23
The main thing I remember about Vibrator reeds is that they were indescribably awful. The smelled bad, tasted bad and played double bad. Brown box Ricos were heaven by comparison. It's no old memory either. I went through my boxes of old stuff recently and found one that I must have gotten 40 years ago. If anything, it was worse than I remembered.
If ever you're in the mood for a bad reed, get a Vibrator.
Ken Shaw
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Author: George
Date: 1999-02-01 17:29
What kind of ligature are you using? Mine (a Rovner) is so made that it puts its pressure on the edges of the cane, leaving the middle more-or-less free. I have never had this problem. And I must agree with Ken - those Vibrators were BAD. I still have one somewhere as a momento. But what did we know back then?
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Author: William Funk
Date: 1999-02-02 23:04
Thanks, Al and Ken.
George - I have a Rovner also, but it does not seem to have the pressure needed to keep the reed edge in contact with the mouthpiece after a while. When this happens, I switch to a Bonade (and crank it down). With the extra pressure, the reed does not respond a freely - so I put off this switch as long as I can.
My latest experiment is to wet as little of the reed as possible, so the butt end won't swell. Mixed success so far. I do use (as Al noted) a plastic reed holder (LeBlanc, I think) and I rinse off the reed before storing.
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Author: Ray Swing
Date: 1999-02-09 14:16
I have read and re-read this post many times and tried to see understand where the reed pulls away from your mouthpiece. I just don't understand the problem. Could you be more specific? Is the reed curving up at the outter edges. Is the whole reed coming loose from the mouthpiece? Is it just the tip curving away too much from its normal "Lie"? Etc. I have only encountered a problem of the reed coming loose with a certain ligiture which I no longer use. My ligiture is a center holding only one and I never have any problems with what you describe.
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Author: William Funk
Date: 1999-02-13 21:18
Ray - I am not surprised by your note as I get a lot of strange looks when asking this question. (I may get the terms wrong, so my reference is page 63 of the currect Woodwind/Brasswind catalog.) I put the reed on the mouthpiece table, which leaves an opening from the tip of the mpc to where the facing angles up. The chart calls this the facing length. As long as the reed stays flat, the opening for air is just this area. However, the problem I am trying to describe is one in which the reed base seems to swell a bit, so the reed does not keep its flat side flat, and does not lie on the table completely. Instead, the edges pull away from the side rail, which allows air to escape along the reed. This is not a big opening, but can be seen by looking down into the mouthpiece near a light (since the light will shine in the mpc past the end of the facing). When this starts to happen, less air goes through the clarinet and it becomes harder to control. This is gradual, but after a while the thing just stops playing. The situation is a lot easier to see on a tenor because the reeds are bigger. If I pull the reed and look at it from the base end, I can see that the bottom is now curved rather than flat.
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Author: Ray Swing
Date: 1999-02-14 00:52
Got your e-mail. Have read your latest post and now understand your problem. As I mentioned in my post of 2-9, I,ve never experienced that type of problem. I will however speculate as to what might be causing the problem. In my case I never soak the reeds.In fact, I only swish them in my saliva for a couple of minutes before playing (as you can see, I'm not a pro). But because of this method of wetting the reed, I never get any moisture to the reed base. Thus, the base will never "swell" unevenly do to uneven moisture content and thus remains flat and in proper contact with the "table". Based on this, I suggest you try to only wet or moisten the facing portion of the reed and not the base. Try this on a few reeds and see if it makes any difference.
R.S.
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