Author: mschmidt
Date: 2023-09-16 23:08
I'm retired now, with more time to devote to the troubling subject of shaper tips.
With my English horn, my current reeds, made with a RDG -1N shaper tip, tend to be a bit sharp, despite doing the usual sorts of things to bring them down in pitch (take more out of the sides of the heart, etc.). Well, years ago I bought a Minsker-Lickman shaper tip and had trouble getting the pitch up to where it belonged, and so that tip has sat unused for many years. I went back to it in the past week, thinking that maybe my reed making and playing had advanced enough that I could figure out how to bring the pitch up to where it needed to be. With one reed done, I am a bit discouraged that the M-L shape is as I remembered it--much of a struggle to get it up to pitch. Of course, more experimentation needs to be done, maybe I can get this much-praised shape to work for me.
But I was wondering if there was something in between these two options available, something that would be easier to adjust my reedmaking to. This chart of shaper tip dimensions is probably the most complete one out there: http://www.grahamsalter.com/Oboe%20Information/Technical%20Information/englishhornshape.html . What this chart shows is the problem of comparing the tip dimensions due to the variety of ways of measuring. I trust Westwind's measurement system, but it is not much help in comparing tips not made by Westwind. (Hi, Robert, are you still here?)
Of the Westwind tips, Coelho seems to be the only one narrower than M-L. But that one is even narrower at the tip than the RDG -1N. I am thinking of getting maybe just an RDG -1, which is wider at the tip, but maybe isn't as wide as M-L in the belly. Anyone want to venture any guidance on this?
Mike
Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore
Post Edited (2023-09-17 00:03)
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