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Re: Strange problem with new reed

Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2004-05-14 17:27

Hi all --

Glad to see some folks back on the board. I thought I had been abandoned!

I still have no idea why that reed is causing the problem I described. When I back it out just a tiny little bit, it functions fine, and, as I said, it is a truly superior reed.

It may have something to do with the end of the staple hitting the metal insert at the bottom of the receptacle (I don't know what to call the place where the reed goes into the instrument -- does it have a proper designation?). And I don't know whether what was happening had to do with something on the instrument affecting the reed, or if the reed was affecting the instrument. As I said, the top joint functioned fine, but the bottom joint was just grunts -- no pitch, no tone. (This is a Yamaha 411, BTW.)

Since the reed works fine when it is slightly withdrawn from the bottom of the receptacle, I guess it is not a big problem. The only issue here is that the reed started out playing a little flat, and I was wanting to be able to get every last millimeter of push on it to counteract that.

Now that I have played the reed for a couple of days, the pitch has come up, and since the staple is soooo tight, it is really not a problem to insert it a little short of the bottom and keep it there. But it's still a mystery to me what was causing this.

Thanks for jumping in! [cool]