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Re: Howarth Academy reeds

Author: Chris P
Date: 2023-04-18 19:52

I hardly use cane reeds now - only on cor as Legere cor reeds aren't on the market as of yet, so I've not had to adjust anything when Legere reeds play straight from the box for me.

If your reeds are wired, you can use the wire to adjust the aperture by squeezing the sides to open it up or squeeze it on the front and back (where the twist is) to close down the aperture if it's opened up too much. Scraping the top 2mm of the reed tip and down the sides will brighten and ease things up without affecting the pitch, whereas scraping at the base of the scrape will ease up the lower notes and sacrifice the tuning up top. That's just the most basic scraping you can carry out on the fly as and when you need to, although like everything, there's a lot more involved in it than just those basic steps.

I'm not affiliated nor even have this book, but you should consider ordering Graham Salter's book 'Understanding the Oboe Reed' as that covers all types of oboe reeds and how to adjust them in far more detail. Also see if there are any YouTube videos of European scrape players demonstrating how they adjust them for any given situation.

Personally I'd rather not make any suggestions that could ultimately do more harm than good and what with the ultra picky nature of oboe reeds where removing a mere speck of reed dust in the wrong place will make the difference between the reed working at 90% to your liking to suddenly not working at all.

Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.

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