Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2020-02-06 19:00
I am just slightly concerned that you say "looked out," and "getting my eye in."
I have tried to guess what reed was the better performer visually over the years only to be sadly mistaken. You can look at color, the shape of the vamp looking at it with back lighting and the whole nine yards and that will not really tell the story. There may be some truth to the really ugly ones being bad though, but even that is a crap shoot.
For me, the ONLY way to judge a reed's performance is on the fourth (or even fifth or sixth in bad weather) day of a break-in period. I soak for about 2 1/2 minutes, play on it for about five minutes and put it away until tomorrow........that's it. The order (and you put the box in order from best to worst at the end of each session) will ALWAYS change in the first two days or so, and may even be different on the "last day" of break-in, but then you number your reeds and then rotate through one reed each day from then on........until they get brittle (maybe a month or two down the road).
That said I find four to six performance ready reeds per box of Vandoren V21 (or Rue Lepic) and even most of the rest are good enough for practice. You may have to toss the last one or two maybe.
..................Paul Aviles
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