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Author: Joarkh
Date: 2010-02-16 09:53
To me, it appears as if the "golden hours" of Vandoren Original reeds come at an earlier stage than in the case of the V12 - you could say the V12 requires a longer break-in period. Has anyone else experiences with this? I suppose that if this is the case, the blue box would be the better choice to be carried around as "emergency reeds" to be used w/o breaking in if everything else fails.
Joar
Clarinet and saxophone teacher, clarinet freelancer
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2010-02-16 10:31
I use both #5 traditional and #4.5 V12 more or less interchangeably and have not noticed the difference you ask about.
Karl
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Author: Joarkh
Date: 2010-02-16 11:47
But the v12 is made out of thicker cane than the traditional, is it not? Does that mean anything for the lifespan of the reed?
Joar
Clarinet and saxophone teacher, clarinet freelancer
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Author: cxgreen48
Date: 2010-02-16 13:41
I have not noticed a noticeable difference either.
However, I suppose it depends how you define "break in."
I think some people want the reed to become softer until it's
at its "golden time." Other people, including me, just want to
stabilize the reed to prevent reed warpage; if the reed plays
too hard or is unbalanced, I can just use the ATG system
to fix the reed.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2010-02-16 15:26
The V12 blank is thicker, so the taper is different, but the tip area and sides that most affect the reed's vibrancy aren't any thicker.
I'd be willing to bet no one has done any scientific study of this, so what is your rationale for theorizing a relationship between thickness of the blank and a reed's lifespan?
Karl
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Author: mrn
Date: 2010-02-16 15:42
I haven't tried to study this in practice, but in theory the thicker-blank reeds ought to take longer to break in. Here's why. Reed "break-in" is apparently caused by the leaching out of hemicellulose from the cell walls of the reed. While *cellulose* (the main constituent of cell walls) is pretty strong stuff and forms nice straight polymer chains, hemicellulose is weak and has a random and amorphous structure. It's easily broken down by the alkalinity of saliva. When the hemicellulose has all leached out, the reed is "broken in."
See chapter 3 of the below dissertation for details (click the "Download full text" link at the right of the below page to download a PDF):
http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=osu1210865836
Wikipedia has an article on hemicellulose here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemicellulose
Now here's why I think a thick blank reed ought to take longer to break in. We would expect a thick blank reed, on account of it having a greater volume, to contain more hemicellulose than a thin blank reed, so there's more that has to leach out before the reed is "broken in." Also, if you use a thicker reed blank, although the surface area of the reed increases a little, it still doesn't increase as much as does the volume of the reed, so there's comparatively less surface area for the hemicellulose to leach out of (in relation to the amount that has to leach out). So if you have to leach out a lot more hemicellulose and you have only slightly more surface area for the hemicellulose to pass through, you would expect it to create a "bottleneck" that causes the whole break-in process to slow down.
You can use a similar argument to explain why thicker-blank reeds seem to be more susceptible to warpage. Wood (and I think we can consider reeds to be "woody" enough for the same reasoning to apply) shrinks when it dries out. Wood warps when it doesn't dry uniformly--some of the wood shrinks while some doesn't. With thicker reeds, you have more volume (so it can contain more moisture--particularly in the center of the reed), but the surface area isn't proportionately larger. Consequently, it's harder for the center of the reed to dry than the sides. The sides of the reed shrink (and become thinner) while the middle of the reed stays swollen. This causes the flat side of the reed to bow outward (convexly).
There are a couple of different ways people combat this. One is to store the reeds where all sides are exposed to dry air (this is what I do because I put mine in those little plastic sleeves the Vandoren reeds come in--I also generally don't use the same reed 2 days in a row if I can help it)--this encourages the reed to dry thoroughly. Another is to store the reeds in a high humidity environment (e.g., Rico Vitalizer Packs) to discourage them from drying out at all.
As to lifespan, I'm not sure that it makes a difference what the thickness is. According to that dissertation I linked to above it's bacteria growth on the surface of the vamp that makes your reeds go dead. The initial physical characteristics of the reed that are associated with the thickness of the blank (bending strength, elasticity, etc.) might determine how much of an effect the gradual bacteria growth has on the reed's behavior (and how quickly it affects its behavior), but it's hard for me to say what that effect would be in relation to reed thickness.
Post Edited (2010-02-16 15:57)
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2010-02-16 16:42
mrn wrote:
> Now here's why I think a thick blank reed ought to take longer
> to break in. We would expect a thick blank reed, on account of
> it having a greater volume, to contain more hemicellulose than
> a thin blank reed, so there's more that has to leach out before
> the reed is "broken in." Also, if you use a thicker reed
> blank, although the surface area of the reed increases a
> little, it still doesn't increase as much as does the volume of
> the reed, so there's comparatively less surface area for the
> hemicellulose to leach out of (in relation to the amount that
> has to leach out). So if you have to leach out a lot more
> hemicellulose and you have only slightly more surface area for
> the hemicellulose to pass through, you would expect it to
> create a "bottleneck" that causes the whole break-in process to
> slow down.
>
Seems plausible.Two questions:
(1) Is the difference in volume enough to make a significant or meaningful difference in the time (number of wetting/drying cycles) needed under a given "break-in" routine for all the hemicellulose to leach out?
(2) In the course of wetting reeds during the "break-in" process, many players only wet the tapered portion (the "vamp") of the reed so that the only moisture that reaches the butt area under the bark is whatever wicks in through capillary action (in my experience moisture doesn't wick very far beyond the vamp when the vamp is the only part I've actually dipped into water). In this case does enough leaching of hemicellulose occur from that part of the reed (where most of its volume lies) to affect anything at all? And if only the vamp area of the reed is exposed to moisture, since most of the extra thickness is cut away, is the volume difference even less meaningful than if the entire reed's volume is considered?
Unfortunately, I don't have the math skills to actually calculate the volumes involved (because of the the vamp's taper).
Karl
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Author: GBK
Date: 2010-02-16 17:20
kdk wrote:
> The V12 blank is thicker, so the taper is different,
> but the tip area and sides that most affect the reed's
> vibrancy aren't any thicker.
That's actually not correct.
The tip thicknesses of the V12 and Traditional reeds are different.
The tip of the V12 reed is .004" or 0.10 mm
The tip of the Traditional reed is .0035" or 0.085 mm
...GBK
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2010-02-16 17:53
I'm tempted to ask, in each case, "which one in what box?" - given the known consistency level of Vandoren reeds of any model. :-)
Karl
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Author: salzo
Date: 2010-02-16 17:59
Interesting topic.
I used to play V12 number 4s, but now play on 4 1/2.
I do prefer the resistance of the heavier reed, but have also noticed a difference in how long they last, and how long they take to break in.
I generally rotate my reeds 4 at a time. Usually I have four that I am playing, four that I am "breaking in".
When using number 4 V12s, it generally took me four days to get them playing.Once broken in, I was lucky to get two weeks out of the four reeds in rotation.
Since switching to 4 1/2s, it takes me at least a week, sometimes as much as two to get them in playing condition. But I get at least a month, very often two months on those 4 reeds once they are ready to go.
From what I understand, the "thickness" of a vandoren reed does not change as the numbers change. I have measured V12 3 1/2 through 4 1/2, and the numbers generally are the same (though I have noticed 4 1/2s are very often thicker at the bottom of the reed). So the higher number does not mean thicker, but I guess denser, or stiffer. It seems to me, that denser cane lasts longer. Of course, the embouchure pressure difference could be a factor in the reed life-but for whatever reason, the higher number does last longer (for me at least).
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Author: mrn
Date: 2010-02-16 20:47
kdk wrote:
Quote:
(1) Is the difference in volume enough to make a significant or meaningful difference in the time (number of wetting/drying cycles) needed under a given "break-in" routine for all the hemicellulose to leach out?
It's hard to come up with really meaningful numbers to answer this question because it really depends on the rate at which the hemicellulose leaches out. But I think it's possible to get a general feel for how this phenomenon works if we make some simplifying assumptions.
The first assumption I'm going to make is to change the reed's shape a little bit so we can use high school math instead of interpolating functions and calculus. So let's pretend the reed is rectangular in the back instead of rounded (so the bark makes a plane parallel to the flat side of the reed). Let's also pretend that the vamp is a simple triangular wedge instead of a complex curve. For what I'm trying to do, this shouldn't make a huge difference.
The other assumption I'm going to make is that the hemicellulose leaches out through all surfaces of the reed except the bark side. I think this is reasonable.
So let's say we've got a thin blank version of this simplified reed. The volume will be equal to the area of the side profile of the reed times the width. The dimensions I'm going to use are 13 mm width, 2 mm thickness, and 77 mm length (about the size of a blue box Vandoren). I'm also going to assume that the vamp starts midway along the length of the reed (which is about right).
In that case, the volume of the reed is:
2 mm x 77 mm x 13 mm x 0.75 = 1501.5 mm^3
(The 0.75 accounts for the wedge shape of the vamp, since the vamp half of this simplified reed has half the volume of the heel)
The surface area (minus the bark) is:
area of the sides + area of the vamp + area of the flat side + area of the butt
= 2 x (2 x 77 x 0.75) + (13 x 38.55) + (77 x 13) + (2 x 13) = 1759.15 mm^2
(The 38.55 I got using the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the vamp length: 2^2 + (77/2)^2 = 38.55^2)
Now, say we have a reed of the same length, width, and shape made from a 3 mm thick blank (50% thicker). Then we get a volume of 2252.25 mm^3 (which is a 50% increase in volume). The surface area, though, (not including the bark) comes out to 1759.15 mm^2, which is only about a 7% increase in surface area. This is because most of the surface area is in the vamp and flat side of the reed and those dimensions change the least when you change the thickness (the flat side doesn't change at all, actually).
Now you can see why the simplifying assumptions don't mess up our analysis that much. If we were to include the bark in the surface area, since the bark doesn't change its surface area with the thickness, the increase in surface area with the thick blank, including the bark, would be less than our 7% result. Likewise, excluding the sides and back from the surface area calculation would also lower the percentage change, since it's the sides and back that change in area the most with a change in thickness. Finally, modeling the reed with a curved bark side rather than straight across would also reduce this percentage, because it would simply reduce the areas of the sides and butt of the reed. We could try to do a better job of modeling the vamp shape, but given the dramatic results obtained the other way, I doubt it will make that much difference when it comes to comparing the increase in volume to the increase in surface area.
So if the rate of hemicellulose leaching is proportional to the surface area (and common sense says it should be) and the amount of hemicellulose in the reed is proportional to the volume of the reed (which also agrees with common sense), then if you increase the thickness of the reed you should get a proportionate increase in the amount of hemicellulose in the reed without nearly as much increase in the rate at which you can leach it out. That suggests that it should take longer to break the reed in.
Of course, there are a lot of assumptions we have to make, not the least of which is that ALL of the hemicellulose in the reed (including in the heel) must be leached out to break the reed in. That dissertation I cited *seems* to suggest this, but I'm not certain about that and it's been a while since I last looked at it, so I'm not 100% sure what what it says. If it doesn't say, we'd need to do some chemical analysis to figure that part out and I don't have access to a chemistry lab.
Post Edited (2010-02-16 20:55)
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2010-02-16 21:58
Some of these posts remind me of a page in Stubbin's book "The ART of Clarinetistry" in which he shows a "reed" with the dimensions of a clothes peg and follows with a ream of calculus and equations to show that such a reed wouldn't play....
The funny thing was that as soon as I saw his "reed" I just knew it couldn't play!!!!
Actually quite liked a lot of the other parts of the book.
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Author: Joarkh
Date: 2010-02-16 22:51
My theory is grounded in empiric experiences.
Joar
Clarinet and saxophone teacher, clarinet freelancer
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