Author: vboboe
Date: 2007-04-15 01:57
... sorry if previous post sounded negative at the end, was interrupted by delightful surprise quick visit of grand-child at same time as realising i haven't eaten anything since breakfast, so maybe it was too high on b.s. while low on b.s. if you get my drift
... the other thing i wanted to mention is already under discussion, how can a reed-maker tell when reed is finished good enough to sell?
Methinks if you make every reed to meet your own exacting personal preferences, that's not necessarily the ultimate guideline to go by for selling to customers. For example, you've already mentioned in the past that you've adjusted to 46mm staples and differences in the way you make your reeds for your local mountainous altitude. Methinks every reed you test will be at domestic altitude and most of us live at much lower elevations. Then there are those made-in-winter reeds and made-in-summer reeds ...
Also, your embouchure isn't ours, and all oboes are quirkily different, so
the reeds that work for you in your oboe are no guarantee they'll work for us
But this is exactly the same risk all customers take with any purchased reed anyway, so in the end game it matters for your profits if your reeds work for more people rather than just a few ... balanced with how much time you actually want to spend at reed-making for sales without being swamped by orders
So the real issue for the reed-maker is, at what point is a reed finished good enough and tested suitably to be agreeable and playable by most customers? Is there a standard average point of stop right there and it's a an OK good reed for students, a darn good reed for pros, but not necessarily a great reed for personal preferences?
So how much extra work / time would it take to 'personalise' reeds for your more exacting & discriminating customers? How would you proceed there? Would that mean a different price structure for your standard student reeds, average pro-reeds and specialised custom reeds?
Speaking as a student, as long as the thing plays mostly in tune and it blows comfortably, it's a good reed. At my present stage of playing, i think $14.95 Cdn per reed (plus sales tax on top) is expensive enough to motivate me to really learn how to make my own. I'm debating whether i shall invest in experimenting with other hand-made samples next year to see if i can find a 'compatible fit' as i'm in process of out-growing the ready-made hard reeds and i'm not yet self-sufficient, but U$25 is prohibitive
My issues would be total costs of reeds, taxes, postage & handling.
One small package around $50 would probably escape Canadian customs duty, but if I totally loved your reeds and absolutely had to have some regularly on subscription, the annual accumulative 'imports' would eventually involve paying duties and a special trip to the postal outlet that's outside of my normal driving circuit to pickup and pay for the package.
This specter looms over every single purchase i might want to make across the border. There are other oboe stuff things i want to get which i haven't found in Canada, eh?
Also, would you expect customers to send you their tubes as standard practice, or provide new tubes each order, or either? I can't see myself getting involved with mailing away 3 tubes (or whatever) a month, because it would take the purchase of a padded minimum size mailing envelope plus extra postage to the US than an ordinary letter to send that envelope.
It might be cheaper to order full price reeds on new tubes. Will that be brass or silver, and what quality brass ... ?
If customers wanted a sample single, double or triple pack to try out your reeds, how much overhead would you have to factor in for discount price limited time offer promotion once a year?
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