Author: huboboe
Date: 2011-03-26 01:19
Good comments. First, though, I'm not a reed maker, just an oboist. But I tend to approach things from an engineering point of view, and I think Goodwinds nailed the essence of it: the numbers promote Consistency, the magic concept. You can only know how a change affects your reed if everything else (or at least most everything else) stays the same, so keep all your tubes the same, use cane from the same batch, use the same shape, and use a set of measurements that puts you in the ball park. Sure, a reed made from softer cane will be a tad thicker, and harder cane will need to be scraped a bit thinner, but if you think back, didn't most of your best reeds look very similar? And don't you rough out a reed to a visual starting place before you start the finishing process?
Of course the weather is going to be another uncontrolled factor. My dry days reeds are different from my rainy days reeds and I can't really tell you what I do differently...
As for your observation, Bryan, all I can say is that it is what it is, but, like the length of an oboe reed is measured from the tip to the bottom of the tube, the EH reed is really measured from the tip to the bottom of the crook, and there's no knowing what crook Hewitt used.
Once again, these numbers are to put you in the ball park, after which you do all the usual finishing stuff. This just gets you in the ball park faster. And I feel, more accurately than a profiler.
And, hey, try it. If it works, great. If not, it's just one more piece of cane down the drain...
Robert Hubbard
WestwindDoubleReed.com
1-888-579-6020
bob@westwinddoublereed.com
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