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Legere French Cut: review

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2023-12-05 08:22

Legere needs to be commended for the continued, steady effort to improve their product. Really, the ICA has to come up with an award for Legere for commitment and innovation.

That said I wish to speak to those of us who are dedicated Legere users.

There are two small negative characteristics to their sound that we live with and can be easy to mitigate. The first is the tendency to sound hollow in an unflattering way in the throat notes. For me the G# is the one that gets the most attention because it can sound, well plastic like if played carelessly. The other character to Legeres that can be unflattering is the altissimo notes above the “F” that sits on the third ledger line above the staff. Those notes can become strident.

The new French Cut reed all but eliminates both these tendencies.

Additionally they are quite responsive. As advertised the material is thinner at the tip than in previous Legeres. But unlike the Euro and the Signature Soprano Saxophone reeds, the French cut is the width of a normal cane reed. This represents a significant lessening of the total surface area of plastic trying to move at a high rate of speed.

Unfortunately the reed stock is not much thicker (up and down) so it may not help those like me who have to use smaller ligatures. However, the standard cane reed width will now enable users to use ligatures such as the Vandoren M/O previously too thin to allow use of the Euro cut.

If I were to try to indicate how the reed sounds in a name, I’d call them “Euro French Cut plus.” Overall a clear improvement on an already stellar product.

……………Paul Aviles

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Legere French Cut: review

Paul Aviles

2023-12-05 08:22