Actually, the one thing that can always improve your tone is to take more lessons.
Regarding reeds, Rico has several levels of reed available, from bargain-basement to really decent. You get what you pay for. In my experience, the bargain-basement pack of 25 reeds had probably 60% that I'd feel very comfortable using. Go up to Rico Royal, and it went into the 80% range -- which is about what I'd get with normal Vandoren reeds. I've not used Mitchell Lurie reeds in 25 or so years. I didn't like them, at the time, because they seemed to cut the reed in kind of a "V" shape, with the most narrow part at the tip of the mouthpiece.
I also know that some folks like to fool around with sandpaper or scraping reeds with a reed knife. I've occasionally used both, mainly on Vandoren because they tend to be harder than other manufacturers' reeds.
Anyhow, the reason to go with whichever manufacturer has the most reeds in a box that you feel comfortable with is to save money. I played mainly bass clarinet, baritone sax, and Bb contrabass clarinet. Those are expensive reeds, at $4 to $5 a shot. Bb clarinet? They're cheap enough (little over $1 per reed for a Rico box of 25) to try multiple brands.
Oh. BTW, these comments are a bit off topic, but considering the thread's two years old, I don't really mind morphing it into something related.