 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-03 22:18
Attachment: 5.jpg (116k)
Hi,
I'm trying to learn how to choose good reeds and improve them to work better for me, and as a start I've opened a whole box of reeds, photographed them close up and am play testing them.
I've figured out that the good ones seem to be the ones with the evenly spaced vertical lines across the whole width of the reed tip, with the lines being not too thick and not too thin.
I predicted from my photos that this reed (image attached) would be a good one, and it is. Mainly it is just very responsive, and doesn't hesitate when I play, which is really helpful.
I wondered if that fits with other people's experience?
Thanks!
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-03 22:20
Attachment: 3.jpg (1462k)
Attachment: 10.jpg (1342k)
For comparison, these two were not great, and they do not have the nice evenly spaced lines right across the full width.
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-03 22:29
Attachment: 1.jpg (1449k)
This one is also really good, and again, has evenly spaced ridges. They are a bit thinner than the first one that I posted, which might explain why it is again a bit more responsive, being less stiff.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2019-08-03 22:46
The cane first of all needs to be mature and well-aged. Even with even ridges, green or barely mature cane won't play as responsively. But the evenness seems to me to be part of a reed's quality.
I confess, the evenness of the grain is something I think I can see as well or, maybe, better with my naked eye, unmagnified. The camera may be overkill for this selection process.
FWIW, Anthony Gigliotti used to tell his students that the best reeds were the ones with mottled cane - that the mottling was an indication of maturity and, he said, relatively higher sugar content (I suppose that made the tone sweeter). Players used to put their reeds on a light board to see the grain and the shadow of the profile and would discard anything off-center out-of-hand. I find that modern cutting techniques have pretty much eliminated those reeds from my student days that had noticeably skewed dark areas (from the way the profile was cut).
Karl
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-03 23:57
Thanks that's good to know. It sounds as though I'm heading in the right direction then.
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-04 09:46
kdk, If this is all well understood by people like Anthony Gigliotti, is there also a book somewhere with it all written down and illustrated?
I'm just thinking that maybe the useful role that I could play would be to take the photos so that someone more expert could write a book showing what is already known, as I haven't found a book currently available that explains all this stuff really clearly.
I feel as though the clarinet is an instrument that has to be learned person-to-person currently, and if a youngster is not lucky enough to live near to an expert then they are not going to be able to learn. I think that if we could write a really good book about reeds, with nice illustrations then that could help a lot of people.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2019-08-04 17:35
When I was a student in NY I studied with Joe Allard for a while and one day he took me on a reed hunt in the music stores in NY. At that time there must have been a dozen music stores like Same Ash, Ponte, Manny's and many others on 47 or 48th street. Back then, the early 60s, every store allowed you to "pick" through several boxes of Vandoren reeds they always kept opened. As we went from one store to another he would pick out several of the "best" reeds for me showing me the color, the grain etc. By the time we finished I had about four dozen boxs of single reeds. Back then Vandoren came in boxes of 20 or 25, can't remember exactly, yea I know. I thought I was in reed heaven, the best reeds for years to come. Well as it ended up, I don't think I had any more good reeds than if I simply bought two new boxes and just play tested them and broke them in. I learned a lot that day and in my career had some of my best reeds that looked like they would never play well. How do you know if it's a good reed, play it and break it in correctly.
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2019-08-04 18:28
Eddie, I agree! The color and such things has nothing to do with most reeds, but the grain should be somewhat straight. Since I've been making my own reeds lately key is looking at the butt end of the reed and seeing the structure of the fibers. Measurements are also key. For example the Mitchell Lurie reed tips were only 5 to 5 1/2 thousandths thick. The Sabine Meyer German reeds are 16 thousandths thick. so 2/3 thicker.
My handmade reeds are 6 thousandths.
SunnyDaze, I gave you a really great answer in the other forum about the butt of the reeds. Check it out, maybe you didn't believe me or you didn't read it. Or maybe you are looking too deep? Not sure! I don't really care, but I did try to help. Since I was in charge of 25 million reeds a year. Designer of the Grand Concert reeds and most of the sax reeds and changed the design of the Mitchell Lurie reeds and studied cane for 15 years, a total of about 375 million reeds. I know a tiny bit about it. Yes Rico made really horrible reeds sometimes because of stinky cane, but it's better than no reeds given out to the public. Now it's even worse. I left Rico in 1996. I'm first to say the reeds are horrible. Thus the reason why I make my own. Yes I get the cane from the Var region.
As I said in the past post it takes me about 20 to 25 minutes to make a reed. I surely don't want to waste that time making a stinky reed because of horrible cane and having to start over.
Hope this helps. I'm getting a bit frustrated here trying to help you and the fellow readers, by not giving you and the readers wrong information. So at this point I won't pop in anymore. It is an open forum so you can say anything you wish, such as green uncured cane works great. It doesn't. Yet it is sold that way. Then reeds that are not cured right die after a few days. All of this can be seen by looking at the butt of the reed.
I actually tell people that want their mouthpieces refaced to send their Legere reeds so I can fix the reeds to match the mouthpieces. 100 percent satisfaction. The Legere reeds are way too thick on the sides so they are not made right. They don't care at all. I spoke to the company 3 times now, but they don't wish to fix them. It's a sad company, putting out junk and with a tiny bit of effort major changes can be made. This also includes the Steuer reeds. They have the best cane in the world, but the reed measurements are often way off.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
Post Edited (2019-08-04 18:44)
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-04 19:53
Hi Bob,
Thanks for writing again. I did read all your comments and I saw that you mentioned the butt end of the reed, but I just understood from it that you knew secrets about the butt end of the reed and that you couldn't tell them on a public forum since they were corporate secrets. Did I miss something there? Your work sound fascinating, but I don't want to pry and put you in an awkward position if it is secret information.
Thanks for the offer of information over email. I haven't emailed, only because if you tell me secrets from your corporate research years, and then I find out the same information from my public research, then it puts me in a tricky position if I would like to publish my own research. People could say that I didn't discover things for myself, and that I only found them because you told me privately, which would be tricky.
Do you see what I mean? It's so kind of you to chat on here, and I really do appreciate it. I totally understand if you have to back out and leave the rest of us to discuss reeds though, if you are bound by corporate research agreements.
Thanks for the advice about making the tips really thin. I have been wondering if I should adjust my reed tips to be thinner, so it's good to know that you also think that.
Thanks!
Sunny
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Author: kdk
Date: 2019-08-04 20:01
SunnyDaze wrote:
> kdk, If this is all well understood by people like Anthony
> Gigliotti, is there also a book somewhere with it all written
> down and illustrated?
I'm sorry if I misled you. I didn't mean to say Gigliotti was right - that was part of the witchcraft (a word I read once in an article by Mitchell Lurie, referring to all the idiosyncratic ideas players develop) that he believed in (or said he did) about reed selection.
Ed and Bob are absolutely right - you can't tell without play-testing a reed, and even then you don't know for certain what it will become as you play it and adjust it over a few days.
I did mean to say that reed manufacture has improved since the '50s and '60s when I was a student to the point where eyeballing reeds (with or without microscopy or even a light table) doesn't tell you anything definitive. The reeds today are just cut more accurately and they all *look* better than many did 60 years ago. Back then you could get reeds in a box with grain that ran diagonally, grain that was so dense you couldn't see light all the way across up to the tip or grain that was dark on only one side and nearly invisible on the other. It was reeds like those that kept a lot of players in practice with their reed knives and other tools, making their own.
Karl
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-04 20:04
Thanks also for the comments on breaking in reeds.
I am working now on learning to break in reeds, learning from this page:
https://www.utm.edu/departments/clarinet/_pdfs/Reeds.pdf
I have bought a box for my reeds with a glass plate to keep them flat.
Oddly, having looked at my box of 10 reeds with my camera and chosen the best looking one, it turned out to be really brilliant, so I think that have in a good look close-up is helping me. I hope next to learn how to adjust the reeds, so I will have a go and see how I get on. It seems like a big learning curve, but I think it will be worth the effort.
I will look out for green reeds and all the things mentioned and do my best. :-) I would really like to learn to adjust reeds to fit my mouthpiece.
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-04 21:03
Hi Karl,
Thanks so much for explaining. I had no idea that things had changed so much. That's really interesting. Diagnoally cut reeds must have been hilarious to play. :-)
Bob - I'm really sorry - I think I may be misunderstanding you. When you say you know a lot of secrets, I'm assuming that you are not allowed to tell those secrets to anybody ever, because of a corporate non-disclosure agreement. I'm also assuming that if you tell me this stuff on email, then I won't be able to tell anyone anything either, which will prevent me from being able to carry out and publish research on reeds in my own right. Am I misunderstanding?
Thanks, and sorry for the frustration. I can hear that you finding this discussion really difficult, and I think I may just be misunderstanding what you are saying.
Sunny
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2019-08-05 20:43
SunnyDaze - thanks again for posting your photos. When I first looked at the 10 reeds, I figured the #10 would not be a good one and for once I was right. What caught my attention was the missing strands in the center of the reed. I have to say, though that I have played on some reeds that should not have played well since they looked badly balanced, cut awkwardly, chipped, etc. But by looking closely, I think one would stand a better chance of knowing something about how a reed might play.
John Gibson, Founder of JB Linear Music, www.music4woodwinds.com
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2019-08-05 21:29
Hi John,
Thanks for looking and for commenting. I see what you mean about the thin area in the centre of number 10. I hadn't noticed that.
I completely agree that having a good close look ought to help. I'm hoping that having close images might help me when I try to learn how to sand the reeds down a bit.
I'm not able to do work just now as we have builders in at the moment, but I should be able to do more on Wednesday. :-)
Jen
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