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Re: Is my mouthpiece too asymmetrical?

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-04-21 21:12

faltpihl wrote:

> So that with a perfectly symmetrical mouthpiece, the reed only
> gets better and better as you break it in.
>

Not in my experience.

I think, intuitively with no data or research to support me, that the reasons a reed is unbalanced are 2: it was originally cut unevenly (thicker on one side), which given current technology would almost have to be a deliberate design feature; or one side is more dense (or more porous) than the other and reacts differently to moisture from the very start and continues to react the same way until it has reached some kind of limit.

The second case would probably fit Paul's idea to let a reed settle before doing anything to it so that any expansion in the fibers as a result of exposure to water reaches its limit before trying to correct the imbalance.

I have always suspected, given the tendency of Vandoren reeds to be consistently heavier on one side or the other (historically on the left, now apparently for some reason on the right), that they'd have to be cutting them that way. You just couldn't (I don't think) control the density levels of each reed from side to side so closely. There used to be a theoretical reason why the left side was made heavier, whether players bought into it or not. I don't know what the explanation of a heavier right side would be.

Which, BTW, is why I asked earlier if you were using Vandorens and if you had tried other brands, most of which are, I find, more consistently balanced as they come out of the box. (But I still prefer Vandorens and put up with the initial balance problems.)

Karl

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