Author: Craig Matovich
Date: 2007-01-06 17:33
On another reed experiment...
He said regarding trimming the tip,"Yeah, it's really not that hard to do with a plaque. Raising it at an angle on the chopping block makes a kind of curve shape to your tip, and never gives you a clean, straight cut across the top. Hence, my plaque cutting."
By cooincidence I was just yesterday wondering why clarinet and sax reeds have the reed tip curvature and we oboe and bassoon players emphasize cutting so straight a tip?
So, today I tried something different... I cut a curved tip on purpose.
After clipping to a offset tip in the usual 'straight' manner, I inserted the plaque and began nipping away at the corners until I'd emulated the curved shape of a sax reed.
I started with a 70 mm reed length, then clipped corner triangles about 1/2 mm, then worked the outside corners back to 69 mm and rounded the inside corners around to gradually meet the 70 mm portion of the tip.
In this case, there is still aprox. 1/3 the reed tip cut straight.
These are both 2nd day reeds, tied and opened yesterday, and today scraped until playable and still a bit low in pitch. A= 436 - 438 hz.
Since I was going to finish them to 68.5 - 69 mm anyway ( I use 46 mm tubes), I thought this would be a fun way to experiment without wasting good cane.
I am surprized at what happened and eager to see how they work tomorrow after drying and perhaps a bit more finishing.
Three things I note so far, the pitch came up a bit which I would not expect until I clip the tip again and the tongueing response really improved compared the the pre-rounded tip treatment and no other change was made except for a few minutes playing on them. And, I can't even make the annoying too much tongue popping sound...even tongueing striaght on the center.
p.s.-- I acknowledged in another post, I'm snow bound a going a bit nuts.
But there may still be something to this.
Post Edited (2007-01-06 22:19)
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