Untitled Document
     
Advertisement Click to advertise with us!
     

Synthetic Reeds

I play on a Bay MOM mouthpiece, .082" tip, 48L that is 13+ years old. I did not change the basic facing curve shape, but I did even up the left/right rails some.

Over the years I have played Fibracells, Bari brand, and Legere reeds on it. Lately I have been trying out the various cuts of Legeres. Some observations:

The Legere Bass Clarinet reeds are only sold in the original classic cut. But they are the same size and shape as Legere tenor sax reeds. They just have a different label on them.

With my BC, mouthpiece, embouchure, and tastes, I like the sound and response of the Studio Cut tenor sax reeds in a 2.75 strength.

The classic cut 2.25 reeds are darker but compare well in resistance to 2.75 studio cut reeds. There are some higher frequencies present when using the studio cut reeds that I like. But the classic cut reeds are quite usable and some may prefer their sound.

The more expensive Signature cut reeds were unusable for me. 2.25 seems to be the right strength to compare to the others on my set-up. But throat tones around open F and F# are fuzzy and dead sounding. I tossed it on my pile to try it on tenor sax, which I am not playing much of lately. I like Fibracells on saxes in general.

What are your experiences with what works for you?
 
Ummm...

Long ago and far away, I conducted a trial of the Legere reed system. At the time, I believe there was only a single option available for each horn - no premium "brands", as it were.

I bought two of each strength around the 2 1/2 bracket, each for clarinet, alto, bass clarinet, and baritone saxophone. All were received in perfect condition, complete with the sticky little blue labels that Legere used at the time. Oh, and they weren't cheap by any stretch of the imagination.

At the time, I was doing shows in the Houston area, along with playing bari, bass and clarinet in a "big band". All of the reeds save the alto were given an extensive workout over a period of a year, although I used them primarily for rehearsals, for reasons noted below. I rotated them in and out of service, and kept notes on any plusses or minuses on my Palm Pilot.

In a word, they were horrible. I'd been playing on the "Purple" stuff for many, many years, and I couldn't put the Legeres away fast enough. Sure, they were always "wet", a plus if you do much doubling. But, I never could get a consistent "tone" out of them on any of the horns (the clarinet was a bit better of the four), and the complete lack of "texture" (for want of a better term) on the reed body meant that my lower lip was constantly sliding about (particularly with the baritone, where a more energetic style of play (with the moves one makes with the thing when doing pop music) occasionally gave me a cut in my lower lip) - a cut that could have serious consequences if you had a five hour job coming up.

(In one of my stupidest moves of my life, I once seriously cut my lip (the upper one, thank God) while shaving preparatory to getting dressed out in my formal gear for a hard chargin' New Year's Eve gig. The last thing I needed while standing up in a ballroom to hack through a rock bari solo was to have blood running down my face, this in front of three thousand revelers. I managed by cutting back on the extreme stuff, but it was one tender lip for about three weeks.)

I didn't have much trouble with the "collapse" of the Legeres after play, but I doubt that I every played one for more than an hour, this due to the discomfort given to my lower lip. (Things were a bit better on the bass clarinet, since the mouth position is a lot more regulated with a horn on a peg.)

One person's opinion, obviously, and there are many folks who swear by them. But, they weren't for me, and I had some forty years of play under my belt at that point in time. I gave mine away (easy to sanitize them - you have to give them that), and never heard a complaint from any of the recipients.

In the end, I moved to a massive reed backup program, keeping two full boxes of baritone, clarinet and bass clarinet reeds within ten feet at all times. With the advent of amazon.com, full boxes of reeds are just a day or two away, so it's easy to keep everything stocked up...as long as you have the dosh to pay for them.

(Alto - not so much, as I used it primarily when playing classic big band stuff (like Sing, Sing, Sing (Parts 1 and 2) where my lead alto took the clarinet part in Reed 5 and I took over the Alto 1 - however, I confess that I preferred to play the alto chart on the baritone, as the third chorus needed the extra "umph" in the bass registers that such an approach gave.)

(An aside: why do we so seldom hear Sing, Sing, Sing (Part 2)? It is a much more interesting clarinet part than heard in (Part 1), and it fits seamlessly with the first component by finishing with the same sort of "bang". (And, unlike Redskin Rhumba, it's not just one boring take on the tenor saxophone.) My lead alto loved the part, but everyone else was indifferent to it, so we seldom performed it as a result.)

Oh, and despite counting Dr. Charlie Bay as a friend (he took a real shine to my wife, which may be the reason), I've never liked the "cut" of his mouthpieces. I'm not one to jump around from neck to neck and mouthpiece to mouthpiece, but he gave me a set to try out on my bass, and something about the side rails just didn't agree with my style of play. (To be fair, my style of play was different from anyone else's, and it may be that I wasn't suited to them.)

However, I loved the half of his bass clarinet neck that I used to the very last day that I played my horn in the speech therapist's office last November, though. Combined with the upper half of the stock Selmer one, it allowed a mouthpiece angle that was delta close to that of the soprano clarinet.
 
One of the bands I used to play in would play Sing, Sing, Sing both parts together if we had a clarinet player who could handle it.

re: bass clarinet reeds, I've been playing a Fibercell tenor 2 1/2 on a Roger Garrett mouthpiece for a while now. The low register really works well with that combination; the upper register takes some work though.
 
Back
Top Bottom