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RE: Legere Reeds Stiffness?

Author: Mario
Date: 1999-03-01 20:32

I am also a very happy user of Legere reeds. After much experiments with strengths from 3 to 4, I now use 3.75 Legere. I have 12 at home at the moment, 10 of them playing essentially the same way, and the 2 others less acceptable from a quality point-of-view.

The rest of my set-up is quite unusual. A Rossi American Bore Rosewood clarinet with a Charles Bay MOM wooden mouth-piece and a Eddie Daniel #2 ligature. I am an amateur clarinetist with lumpy but intense practice sessions. So, I do not have time to work on reeds; I do not have time to readapt to new reeds every week-end (I practice 3 hours each day on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays - rarely in between since I travel a lot).

I just love these new reeds. They are predictable. I am learning to compensate for the little weaknesses that they might have. I can transfer my adaptation to all reeds in my clarinet case. I play them in turn rotating them so that they all age at the same rate. They play better with a few hours of breaking in (they seem to darken), and they play better thereafter after 10 minutes of warming up.

They provide me with a woody warm chalumeau, a round colorful clarion, and a responsive pretty altissimo. I have no problem getting to Altissimo G from anywhere while maintaining sound quality and intonation. I can get to altissimo A without problem by concentrating a little bit.
My high break homogenized substantially after my adoption of Legere reeds. You should see how well my throat tones sound with Legere reeds and some of Ridenour resonance fingerings.

Granted (like many observations made on this Board), they appear a little bright at first. But they do mellow over time. Also, I changed ligature to go to a darker system (The Eddie Daniel #2 is a combination fabric with a metal support). When I switched from my Oligature, I got an instant darkening of the sound. That's what was needed to correct this brightness issue. The message here is that any component of your sound machine interacts with all others in a feedback loop. In Ostend this Summer, I will try many mouthpieces and ligatures with this Legere reed and my new Rossi to try to find an even better combination, if it can be found. But I doubt it. 10,000 hours of practice is probably my next step.

Yesterday, the professional pianist with whom I work Brahms and Shumann told me that my sound was lovely and was better than ever. It was after a pass through Brahms #1 movt #2. Since It also corresponded to my observations at the moment, I can only say I was pleased. This occurred after 3 hours of non-stop playing with mind, body, instrument and reed warmed-up and in good shape.

Oh yes. Why so many reeds? I am not sure I can get others quickly considering the increased demands for this new product. I can have an accident and break a reed. Legere (probably an under-financed start-up) could go bust anytime. I just do not want to be left stranded. I will be buying a few reeds per year just in case.

Until I get the time to work on my reeds every day (i.e.: when I retire...), I found the reliability, predictability and maintainability of the Legere just great. Since the overall performance is also excellent, the value is superb. I know that cane reeds prepared and managed properly can probably exceed the Legere performance. But Legere works better than anything else I have tried in my amateur past.

Legere also impressed me with the quality and effectiveness of his Web site. Obviously, he is working with professional marketers who have advised him very well on the way to take advantage of his family name to create a superb positioning on the Web. If he can maintain quality up while ramping up volume, if he can develop the operation side of his business, and if can find financing to fuel his growth, we are looking at a very successful business in the making. I have high expectations. He is an engineer, and engineers can do anything, I mean anything, when they put their mind to it.

No only that, Legere is a French-Canadian from Barry Ontario. In 50 years, clarinet history books might record the fact that the clarinet weakest link was transformed by a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from the great country up North. I very proud of Guy Legere. He might be, as we speak, pushing cane reeds to the "ancien music" arena.

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