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Re: plastic reeds

Author: Northreed
Date: 2004-12-01 19:03

Hello All:

I have also heard that the Legere folks in southern Ontario (Canada) are trying to develop a synthetic oboe reed to supplement their line of synthetic single-reed products. I haven't talked with them recently, but I have heard through the grapevine that progress is understandably slow. Apparently Peter Voisy is working alongside the Legere staff as the oboist member of the team.

It's a shame that the old "Fibercane" (plastic) reeds were so awful, because I believe that their poor quality (in all respects) delayed the development of a good synthetic replacement for cane, and may have given "plastic" reeds a bad name.

I chatted a few years ago with a California-based reed-maker (I believe he was the "Fiber-cell" inventor for single reeds (his name is likely in my files, but not on my tongue). He claimed to have tried making synthetic oboe reeds, but had a problem getting them to form properly around the staple. As expected, much deformation has to occur with soaked cane for this, and the subsequent reed quality, opening, side-seal, stability and many other characteristics depend on this tying-on procedure. He eventually had to physically gouge out a staple-shaped groove in each synthetic cane blade in order to go to the scraping step so that he could test the materials. This took a long time, but apparently, the resulting reeds actually performed reasonably well. This should give us hope....!!!

We shouldn't be referring to these new reeds as "plastic" since all are composite formulations which incorporate different materials (some of which are plastics), each contributing particular characteristics to the overall composite. These are complex and sophisticated composites, and it seems to me that we should not dismiss them too soon, or lump all "plastic" reeds together.

Having said that, it is clear that the eventual musical market for such materials may be insufficient to justify the large research budget which will likely be required before we oboists are happy with the product. I suspect we'll be with natural cane for a while to come, but I look forward with great optimism to the day when I can buy a uniformly-magnificent synthetic replacement to make my reeds with!!!!

Cheers,

Nigel

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