The Oboe BBoard

The Oboe BBoard The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Re: Legere Oboe Reeds!

Author: mschmidt
Date: 2014-07-19 07:10

I remember hearing that one of the problems with replacing cane with plastic was that cane was anisotropic--it's stiffness is different in the direction of the grain rather than across it. That's why early attempts to just do a simple replacement never worked very well.

I am totally ignorant as to what Legére is doing, but if they are getting good results, I suspect that they are either (1) making a anisotropic composite, perhaps by imbedding something like oriented glass fiber into the reed, or (2) readjusting the whole reed profile so substantially as to compensate for the isotropic nature of conventional polypropylene.

The fact that they say you will only dull your knife by trying to make adjustments may be consistent with either of these possibilities, especially the first! Polypropylene on it's own should be less wearing on knife steel than cane--cane contains silica, whereas polypropylene is just hydrocarbons. But if they have glass fiber or any other harder fiber in a composite, these fibers may be responsible for knife wear.

Saying "it will just dull your knife" may also be true if they have adjusted the reed profile so much that any efforts on your part to adjust it in conventional ways will have no benefit. In this case, the dulling of the knife is not the point of the statement, but the lack of beneficial results.

Mike

Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore

Reply To Message | Avail. Forums | Flat View

Newer Topic | Older Topic

Topics

Author

Date

Legere Oboe Reeds! new

Chris P

2014-07-09 14:53