Author: Mark Cookson
Date: 2010-07-19 22:19
I've been working on oboe as a double for a while now, and I'm feeling ready to try my hand at reedmaking - even if only to gain some insight into adjusting reeds to suit me better.
I'm in the UK and I've been playing on reeds bought from David Cowdy (www.reedmaker.co.uk) which seem to work pretty well on my oboe (a conservatoire Fox 333 I picked up cheaply on ebay...) He uses Chiarugi 2+ staples with a Hortnagel 106 shape.
Before I go ahead and order anything, I thought I'd ask these questions:
1. If I'm trying to make a short scrape reed, is my Fox oboe likely to suit different staples or shapes from the Marigaux and Howarth oboes that most of my oboist friends here seem to play on? Someone told me that American oboes might have a different bore from French ones, but I don't know if that would make a difference in terms of reedmaking.
2. I'm planning to order some Chiarugi 2+ staples, a matching mandrel, some gouged and shaped cane, some plaques and some thread - am I forgetting anything vital?
3. I know some very good oboists here seem to manage to work reeds using just a Stanley knife, changing the blade when it gets blunt. Do you reckon I can get away with this, or would a real reed knife be better?
4. I've been looking at all the gouged and shaped cane available at www.oboeshop.de
They offer all their cane in a choice of diameters (9.5-10mm, 10-10.5mm or 10.5-11mm) and thicknesses (60-61, 59-60, 58-59, 57-58, 56-57, 55-56 or 52-55 hundreths of a milimeter). Are there any measurements that would be pretty typical for English style oboe reeds? Any brands of cane that you've found reliably good?
Thanks in advance,
Mark
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
