Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-11-20 02:08
I am making great progress on all aspects of my clarinet playing- all in the direction of more consistent enjoyable reliable play, where I can think about the music not the mechanics.
My breakin process these days is "one song per reed per day until it settles in or gets rejected". I know that's not as rigorous as some of you do, but I try to make every step of everything I do "earn its keep". Minimum time spent fussing with reeds or playing on bad ones / maximum time spent playing on nice reeds.
As of last week I had 3 or 4 nice reeds and a handful of almost but not quite winners- all V blue 2.5's- and a cabinet full of rejects of varying pedigrees.
I bought three V12 2.5's from a local store and added them to my working set. Day one was NICE on all 3, with only 1 needing any ATG work. They degraded badly on day 2, so much so that I thought V12's were going to be a complete bust for me. So I ran out and got yet another box of 10 Vblue 2.5's (which apparently are a very tough act to beat). Then 3 more days of playing 13 reeds one song each, plus always a 14th good older reed for comparison. Now the V12's have 5 days of play, the newest Vblues 3 days.
In my process, new Vandoren blues breakin fairly smoothly and consistently. That is, they settle eventually pretty close to how they play initially. They can go downhill a bit the 2nd or 3rd day before they bounce back, but not dramatically. At this point I conclude that I CAN judge the quality of a new Vblue, though I will probably need to prove that in another 2 or 3 boxes at least, before I'm willing to toss a Vblue on the 1st play.
HOWEVER... the V12's caught me by surprise. They played TERRIBLY on days 2 and 3, absolute mush- but recovered nicely on days 4-5. And right now they are neck and neck with the blues. I feel and hear some differences, but I think there's more variation reed to reed than type to type. So the jury is still out on V12's for me.
Something is very different in character between V12's and blues that affects breakin. Perhaps one is presoaked and the other isn't? Or were my 3 V12's a fluke? If V12's prove better for me in the long run I guess I'll go that way, especially if less $ per good reed.
Have others encountered this extreme breakin behavior for V12's? If it's common, I wonder how many V12's have been thrown out because the players didn't know they might recover in another day or 2 of play. This could be a reason to recommend blue over V12 for students and such, if blues play more consistently during breakin.
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2014-11-20 02:15)
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