 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: knotty
Date: 2015-11-27 02:57
Seen this term used with some manufacturer's reeds. What does it mean? each one is tested somehow? each is given a eyeballing? a feel test? or, the raw cane is brought in from the fields carried in one's arms?
Thanks!
~ Musical Progress: None ~
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2015-11-27 03:17
Many years back Vandoren offered this "option", I still have one box of such left.
I don't know what the selection entailed but suspect just a visual check for the usual "good signs" e.g. reed colour, eveness of cut ?
From memory I don't think I ever found that the average yield of decent playing reeds was any better than from "non-selected" boxes
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-11-27 03:38
I doubt that such reeds are even play tested, if for no other reasons than health ones, or that such a process would be too expensive to implement, too subjective, and too selective.
Best case: cane associated with what players have in the passed have deemed good reeds is chosen, with no guarantee that reeds (all cut the same way, which they are for a model and brand, even across different strengths) will have the right amount of mother nature given variability to match their cut and your taste. More likely best case scenario: a manufacturer's better cane is diverted to this product line.
"What does it mean?"
That maybe you paid too much for these reeds compared to ones not hand selected from that manufacturer given that their added cost may very well not be justified by added or longer performance life, either before or after user adjustment.
Perhaps not all reed brands are this way. Case in point, Tom Ridenour use to have a program (he may still) where you gave him samples of reeds you liked and he'd return to you (for a fee) new ones with similar characteristics.
Perhaps not all players agree with these sentiments. I'm certainly not claiming that all reed brands are equal, but on the other hand I'm not sure I have better success with a box of Vandoren V.12's, V21's or Rue Lepic, on average versus cheaper Vandoren Blue Box reeds on average; in fact the reverse may be true.
Maybe the winner in the V21 box is better the the Blue Box's winner. Maybe not. And is it worth the price differential?
Hand selected, IMHO, may very well be a method by which manufacturers do something us economists call "capturing the market"--which is the process of as closely charging for pretty much the same product as each segment of the market will pay, along as its above manufacturer cost, in an effort to maximize their profit.
Say a new sneaker is brought to market. It commands top dollar that only a few will pay. Over time its novelty and newness wears off, its price comes down, but is still substantially above manufacturer cost, and more people purchase it as a result of the price drop. This is capturing the market. To initiallly offer the sneaker at one middle of the road price has the manufacturer lose out on profit made by the few willing to pay much more for it that was asked, but don't, in addition to those willing to purchase it for less (but still at profit).
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(The best tool for a hand selected reed is an etude book.)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-11-27 04:50
Mitchell Lurie used to have (maybe still has) a "hand selected" grade reed. As young players back in the '70s and '80s we used to joke about how they might have been selected and by whom? You can usually tell if a reed has been wet and dried even once, and they looked pristine, so I doubt if it involved anything more than eyeballing or maybe a scanner that passed light through the reed and measure the evenness of the density, but those are only guesses.
Karl
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2015-11-27 07:15
Mitchell's reeds were selected kind of by hand, for color, and cane that came ONLY from the Var region of France. That Var cane was tested by me in the 1980's for quality. The reeds were cut twice using 2 huge diamonds, spinning around 15,000 RPM's for extreme accurate cutting. The tips of the reeds were set to .005". All of the other clarinet reeds have thicker tips. This is the reason why the Lurie reeds were shorter than the regular reeds. (Cut twice) When testing a few of the reeds, by playing them, if I didn't like the cane I pull the cane off and switch it with other Var cane. It was a challenge sometimes making Mitchell happy and keeping Rico Management happy. Rico owners surely didn't want to waste money on cane, when I rejected it. There were surely some moments where I had to take a strong stand. This was also a problem when producing the Grand Concert reeds. I wanted the good reeds to last a few weeks to a month or 2.
RPM's - Revolutions per minute
Interesting subject.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-11-27 21:07
I’ve often wondered about the logic of cutting cane reeds with such precision.
On the one hand, recognizing that cane has variability between batches, reeds, and even within the reed itself, it would stand to reason that we do everything we can to minimize that variability by cutting reeds with the enormous precision I contemplate.
On the other hand, does it make sense to “cut a slice of baloney with laser precision.” Or to rephrase, are we cutting something so precisely that itself is subject to greater variability than is worth the expense of such precision cutting?
Were we talking about reeds made of steel or manmade substances upon which high degrees of quality assurance can be brought to bear to insure material consistency and stability, like some synthetic reeds, perhaps such precision cutting is no more precise than the substance ability to hold and “appreciate” such precision.
(This is not a plug for synthetic reeds over cane, or vice versa. It's just an appreciation that the former may have greater dimensional stability.)
This reminds me sometimes of the precision with which some clarinet manufacturers report to cut the wood upon which their clarinets are made, when the wood itself is subject to greater dimensional changes as a result of temperature and humidity changes over time than such cutting tolerances.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-11-27 21:57
I guess in mass production you need to start somewhere, from some consistent and predictable point. Otherwise, at what degree of precision would you draw a line? It just removes one source of variability. The rest constitute the reasons why synthetics offer such temptation.
From what I've read players who make reeds by hand work far less with metrics and more, once they get down to a fine enough level, by feel. A person making reeds by hand is more likely to chuck a piece of cane early in the process and far less likely to care what the actual thickness is at the tip or anywhere else. Mass-production doesn't allow for the same kind of testing and judging throughout its stages.
Karl
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