Author: mschmidt
Date: 2019-08-07 08:06
I have some experiences that contradict some of what Dane and Geoff have posted, but this is all experience gained with long-scrape American-style reeds. Thinning the tip is always where I go first in bringing a reed up to pitch--lots of times I think I'm done with the tip but find, with a freshly-sharpened knife, that I can make it a little thinner. Then I can shorten the tip and the pitch comes up.
I find that reeds can be made to play in tune at a variety of lengths, but it depends a lot on the cane. My soft-cane reeds end up being short. Length of the tip matters more than the overall length of the reed.
I have found that taking more off the back of the reed, below the heart (in a long-scrape reed) doesn't necessarily result in a lower-pitched reed; in fact, taking it out of the spine in the back is my go-to strategy in getting a too-open reed to close up, which brings up the pitch. Taking more off sides of the heart is the number one way I use to flatten a too-sharp reed, so I try to avoid that area unless the reed is too sharp.
Sadly, I think that piece-to-piece variations in cane have a lot to do with why our reeds don't always play the same even if we always make them the same.
Mike
Mike
Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore
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