Author: cjwright
Date: 2007-01-13 02:23
No, I've just been doing "as feel'. I have played with my Opus 1 countless times, and have finally found a setting that I like, the middle is 62 or so and the sides are "thinner". Quite thinner than I have traditionally used. When I soak it up, it puffs up a mm or two, but I've found when I regouge wet, it's too small. So it's just a matter of how thick my gouge is. (The Opus 1 blade curve is one of the strangest I've ever used. The blade hs a curve where even with very thin sides, you get HUGE openings, so I've been forced to compensate in my scrape and my sides to get the smallest opening possible.
I twist as much as I need to to make the piece of cane straight. And if it doesn't end up being straight, or doesn't want to be straight enough to get an even gouge, I simply chuck it.
I think I get a smoother sound with dry gouged reeds than wet gouged reeds. My wet gouged reeds would gouge unevenly, and have "chunks" torn out of the piece, so when I was working on a very thin tip, all of the sudden a big hole would appear in the middle of it, not because I cut one out but because it had been gouged out from the inside.
My best suggestion is to "give it a try". Other than Tone, response, longevity, etc, I think that's more applicable to how you scrape the reed (although I can scrape my reeds thinner, which I suppose makes the tone and response better.) Meanwhile, I've given up on wet gouging. At least for the moment.
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