sxpoet

i’m now retesting a different reed out of the 11 reeds i bought, one day at a time.
I’ve started with the D’addario reeds as everyone worked, compared to the Vandoren.

Day one -The La Voz – i’ve ruled out, it’s playable, but not responding as well as i would like, and the sound isn’t suitable for my dark mouthpiece

(Jazz musicians choose these…[Read more]

Checkout the difference in the neck size between your 26 and your 62, we know that student saxes are designed for kids around the age of 10 to be able to play easily with their not fully grown lungs and smaller body frames.

One of the interviews i watched, claimed that it was the type of neck used on a sax that made it a better sounding sax, not…[Read more]

You want to try out some D’addario reeds, might open your eyes …

Here’s something for you to think about –

I’ve been using the same two cane reeds on my sax for under a year, they’re average playable, suitable for practice, i don’t rotate them properly, i just pick one at random and use it for the whole time i practice that day.

Here’s the important fact, i don’t play for longer than an hour everyday, and i…[Read more]

Just ordered a D’Addario Alto Synthetic VEN No.2 reed, i’ll try it out next week when it arrives by post.

They say with synthetic reeds that they remain flat all the time, so a No.3 synthetic reed will always be a No.3 reed, whereas with cane reeds the more you play them they don’t remain flat and the tips start to curve away, so eventually a…[Read more]

William – all the tenor recordings with synthetic reeds sound great to me.

Unfortunately for me all the alto synthetic reeds that i have tried so far just didn’t sound right compared to the cane reeds especially higher up the sax, and a few keys were badly out of tune for me to embouchure them in tune. So i just can’t take to them.

i can’t say i…[Read more]

The life expectancy of a reed is directly proportional to how often you play the reed.

The less you less you play the reed, the longer it will last, similarly the more you play the reed will quickly shorten it’s life.

How well you store your reeds and rotate them will only give you a slight advantage in the life expectancy.

The comparison reed charts for Vandoren and D’addario are professionaly quite accurate!

Providing you know the Strength Number of the Reed you are accustomed to playing you can look it up on the charts and cross reference it with all the other types of reeds to get similar strength of reed.

When i went into my local sax shop, run by a profession…[Read more]

Reeds Technical Elements

All the reeds i just put them on my tongue for a minute or so, so that they were warm and wet. No reed preparation was performed on the reeds.

Bit i need to play my reeds on a rotation process, ex take 6 new reeds, and play each one for a maximum of 10 minutes each – start treating them more sensibly, so they get broken in properly. Then after a…[Read more]

i would definitely buy a few plasticover reeds, as an alternative to a plain cane reed, ideal for practicing.

But to reiterate, i need test the remaining 8 reeds in more depth, across different styles of music, all 8 reeds are contenders, the D’addario Select Unfiled 3Medium reed is a front runner with the rest closely following.

I have tried synthetic reeds on the Alto, and to date i haven’t found any brand that works well across the alto range. I found a lot of random notes dropped out badly and going higher up the sax, the notes sounded very false, squeaky and plasticky, like i was playing a plastic recorder.

The synthetic reeds definitely work better with…[Read more]

That was a very successful test, i tested all 11 reeds playing each one along to johnny’s Michele backing track (suitable track for a dark mouthpiece).

When i was buying the reeds, i did mention the fact that i could be picking a bad reed, however when i tested them, i found three vandoren reeds were hard to play – in fact they are ideal if i…[Read more]

He was also telling about the selmer mouthpieces, the reason why the old mouthpieces sound different is because Selmer lost the original moulds that they made the older mouthpiece from, so they had to start from scratch and create new moulds.

i was chatting to my local sax shop owner today, and he was telling about 20 years ago they they bought 5 brand new Selmers and they had to send all of them back to manufacturer, they hadn’t been assembled properly, and none of them could play in tune.
My jaw fell on the floor!