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Re: Synthetic Redux

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2022-12-05 00:49

So besides apologizing for being a bit brusk I feel the need to explain where I'm coming from on synthetic reeds.

I am NOT frustrated with or disappointed in cane. In fact I do believe that the best results in sound are still to be found in working with cane reeds. I came to synthetics via the back door if you will. It was brought to my attention that you can use a German mouthpiece on a French clarinet quite successfully and take advantage of the "just put it in your mouth and blow" ease of German playing using a 2 1/2 strength German reed. It took me six months to adapt to this change but it was well worth it and only the German style facing, tone chamber and bore can do this (no approximation of smaller numbers in French facings will give you the ease AND the high performance). Once I achieved success with the German mouthpiece, it occurred to me that there were (at the time) far more German professional players (including Wenzel Fuchs) who had great success with synthetic reeds. I only went down this path to experiment and see where this would lead me. It actually took several years of quite dedicated work to refine a "second best" approach to cane, but I find several factors worth all the effort to include constancy of play from day to day, week to week. Just to reiterate, these are factors that make taking a bit off the performance of the sound worth it.

Now to Ambipoly. I came on board rather soon after their launch to give it a chance. These were according to Silverstein the greatest thing since sliced bread. They were awful. I waited for (I believe) the third iteration to try them again with Silverstein assuring everyone that this was now far better than sliced bread and just like cane. I did a fair assessment using a wide range of strengths so I could find the best match for my set up having switched back to a Boehm mouthpiece. It was still awful; not even close to the Legere Euro Cut reeds (still European Signatures at the time).

So now Wenzel Fuchs uses Ambipoly (so were are told) and he endorses them (so we are told). I can forgive the claims from Mr. Black since any of our assessments are just subjective. The sound he produced on the Ambipoly in the video was quite familiar to me and not something I care to produce myself, though if he says he likes this sound and says this sounds more like cane to him........that's his prerogative. If we ALL have learned anything from politics in the last six years it is that the only time one cannot lie is when giving sworn testimony to a Federal grand jury, or to Congress. Therefore, as always, we are all left using our best judgement on any claims about anything that is proffered to the general public.

I do, however take the claims of Wenzel Fuchs more seriously and may at some point soon give the Ambipoly another go (researching whether there is a German version which may change the equation completely). It may be worth it for me to revert back to the German mouthpiece again if the Ambipoly sounds "THAT GOOD" on the German mouthpiece.

Until then I will stick with.......just awful.

................Paul Aviles

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