 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: William
Date: 2015-04-24 19:21
I think that the synthetic reed for clarinet and saxophone will soon make the cane reed "old school" and obsolete. Why do we player's continue to cope with the inconsistences of cane reeds when a reliable alternative is available for our use?? I have been playing Forestone reeds on clarinet and saxophone for over five years in all of my performance venues and have never been happier as a musician. The new Black Bamboo clarinet and sax reeds are especially nice with rich, resonate sounds and consistencies not found in cane. So I ask you, why do we continue to play "Whack-A-Mo" with cane reeds when the reliable and consistent synthetic reed is already here to end our pain??
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Author: clarinetist04
Date: 2015-04-24 20:06
I don't care for Forestone reeds. They play too soft for me (I've tried up to the hardest, at least at the time) and, more importantly, they are too expensive. When I bought them and had issues with the hardnesses (I got a range in the sample pack, which was still something like $60 for 3 reeds or thereabout) Forestone wasn't particularly helpful and I just lost my patience with them.
I'm glad they work for others, they're just not for me.
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Author: fskelley
Date: 2015-04-24 20:07
I wasted a lot of $$, emotion, and time on Legeres before returning to cane. Others here on BBoard have done the same or similar, though some report they continue to use them or go back and forth. Still others use nothing but Legere, and are happy. And for all I know, if I were now to try Legere again I might be deliriously happy with them, my previous troubles could easily have all been just me. Or not.
But Forestone and a couple of other brands have also tempted me. They seem more sophisticated than Legere (is that a fair characterization?) and I think I hear more rave reviews about them- now you're given another. Any negative votes out there? Specifically, anybody given Forestone a fair shot for a while and then returned to cane? (Now I see clarinetist04's comment.)
My reed trials are chronicled here on BBoard too well already. For now I am happy with 1 or 2 of my Vandoren blue #3's (out of my current working set of about 10). All I would ask of a Forestone or any other synthetic (or other brand of cane!!!) would be to play nicely out of the box the first day, and the 2nd, and the 3rd, and so on for months at least, and let me think about the music not the reed. William- if you think Forestones deliver this, I am ready to fork over the $$. But I cannot afford any experimentation, I need to just keep playing. What's the closest equivalent to a Vandoren blue box #2.5 (I always adjust my #3's down)? Do Forestones and ATG get along? Thanks for your input.
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2015-04-24 20:08)
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Author: TomS
Date: 2015-04-24 20:27
Use mostly Legere ... the Classic Cut seems to work favorably on more MPs than the Signatures. When functioning properly, the Signatures have great articulation speed and crispness ...
I have found that my subjective impression of stability for Legere is not a lot better than cane. Especially the Classic reeds seem to take a while to warm up and then start going too soft ... and setting the reed higher on the MP doesn't seem to mitigate this softness like it does with cane.
In addition, the Legere seem to be very sensitive to temperature ... I usually place my reed holder under my leg to keep them warmed up. Just a few degrees of ambient temperature seem to make a big difference and strength and how they play ... on a cooler day, they are stiff, sluggish and unresponsive, until well warmed up.
The warm up is not just a temperature thing either ... apparently just playing the reed limbers it up ... like bending anything back and forth, it gets softer (eventually fatigued and breaks).
Not tried the Forestone reeds ... yet.
For me, I just like the sound of the Legere ... they play wonderfully on my M13 with a warm, compact quality. Oh ... I also sand the reeds narrower ... more tone center and more lateral adjustment range on the MP. I don't mess with any other adjustments ... it just screws them up.
Tom
Post Edited (2015-04-24 20:29)
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-04-24 20:34
I, too, have tried Forestones and found even the hardest ones mushy on my mouthpieces, so I can't really judge the tone quality I get from them. I don't especially like the tone quality I get from Legeres, but at least I can find ones that respond cleanly on my current mouthpiece, so I find them useful for doubling and sometimes for teaching when I want to be able to play for or with a student without worrying about a dry reed.
Forestones in particular have a more limited distribution and, when I've ordered directly through their website, seem to take a long time to arrive. I sometimes suspect they ship to the U.S. by way of Antarctica and need to wait for the ice breakers to get their shipments moving.
I'd be happy to try the Black Bamboo model, as you and others have mentioned them favorably here before, but I have easily a dozen older Forestones and Forestone Premium Cuts that are all too light. William, can you give us any sense of strength comparison to other available reeds (cane or other Forestones)? Has the general range of strengths widened at all in the last year or so (since my last purchase)?
> So I ask you, why do we
> continue to play "Whack-A-Mo" with cane reeds when the reliable
> and consistent synthetic reed is already here to end our pain??
My answer is that so far I prefer the result I get from cane. When I find the synthetic reed that gives me the same result as a good cane reed, that's when I'll happily make the switch.
Karl
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-04-24 20:34
"I think that the synthetic reed for clarinet and saxophone will soon make the cane reed "old school" and obsolete."
I truly hope you are correct, much that my personal viewpoint, sadly, is that this may not be the case. Perhaps it depends upon one's definition of "soon" and the degree to which said "obsoleteness" is complete.
"Why do we player's continue to cope with the inconsistences of cane reeds when a reliable alternative is available for our use??"
Well, I suspect some of it has to do with older school players being less than open to change. But for me, and many others like me who have tried various brands and models of synthetics, we have just not been able to get out of them what we can out of good cane reeds. In fairness, let me be open about the costs of good cane reeds. There's the cost that one sometimes has to go through a bunch of (cane) reeds to find a good one, and that there's the time to break it in and adjust it, and the paradox of its surest cause of demise being the very use of it to play. But I have found inability to do a couple of necessary things on synthetics that's needed for my genre of play. I completely conceede that it could be me and/or my mouthpiece as the root cause--much that others concur with these findings.
"I have been playing Forestone reeds on clarinet and saxophone for over five "years in all of my performance venues and have never been happier as a musician."
I am genuinely glad for you and can appreciate that if this is the case, why you might be inclined to make compelling arguments against cane.
"The new Black Bamboo clarinet and sax reeds are especially nice with rich, resonate sounds and consistencies not found in cane"
I admit to having not yet tried this model. Perhaps another stumbling block that synthetic reed makers face in getting people to try them is the "entry cost." I know Legere has addressed this in various marketing efforts, like reed strength exchange.
I am not saying synthetics aren't worth their cost compared to cane. To those that like them they may be a better value than cane. But getting your feet wet with a new brand of cane might be cheaper, buying say 5 reeds, than one synthetic you may not like. Of course I'm not implying that 5 reeds often makes for adequate product testing.
========
Winston Churchill thoughts on Democracy as a form of government, and cane reeds, I believe, have something in common: the are the worst forms of running a government or playing a clarinet, except for all the other alternatives.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-04-24 20:39
And, BTW, now that I've looked up the comparison chart on Forestone's website, why do they show an XH (extra hard) strength on the chart but the choices on the ordering page only go up to H (hard)? Are the XH reeds available?
Karl
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-04-24 21:26
WhitePlainsDave wrote:
> perhaps, every now and then, you need that rare
> elusive reed to "go to 11." ![[wink]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie3.gif)
>
> https://youtu.be/KOO5S4vxi0o
>
Well, more seriously, the chart shows that a Forestone Traditional or Premium Cut H is equivalent to a Vandoren Traditional #3 and that even a Forestone Black Bamboo H is only equivalent to a Vandoren Traditional #3-1/2. The XH Black Bamboo reed is indicated as equivalent to a VD Trad #4.
There are harder Vandoren reeds on the market than VD Trad #3-1/2 for a reason. That Forestone seems to have chosen to ignore that whole end of the spectrum of reed strengths may be one reason why so many of us still use cane.
Karl
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Author: clarinetist04
Date: 2015-04-24 21:59
On Vandoren blue box reeds I customize 3.5s a little harder or 4.0s a little softer, althought the 56 RL 3.5's can sometimes hit the sweet spot. (Incidentally the V21s seem extremely soft to me - the 3.5 feels like a little softer than a blue box 3).
As I said, I tried (and still have them) the hardest Forestones they had and wasn't even in the ballpark. This was probably 5 years ago. I tried adjusting them, cutting, sanding, etc. and could never get it to come in for me.
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Author: William
Date: 2015-04-26 20:59
For those of you asking about strength comparisons between Forestone and cane, all I can offer is that--six years ago--I played V12, 3.5 or 4 on my Chicago Kaspar #14 mouthpiece. Today, the Black Bamboo MH seems to be equal in strength and response. I might add that Forestone reeds may be clipped and sanded just as cane reeds, although I have found little need to do any of this. If anything, I sometimes tip the reed slightly to the left to enhance performance but I never have found need to balance them. They tend to be very symmetrical straight "out of the box".
(btw, last evening I played an orchestral concert on a Forestone reed that has been in use for the past two years. They are resilient and last indefinitely.....)
Post Edited (2015-04-28 22:53)
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