The 2007 harvest of soft French chanter and drone cane is now ready. Chanter cane is available in Concert and Flat Pitch diameters, and all sizes of drone cane are available. Prices are well below that of NPU. Please PM me for further details.
Good luck with your endeavor Mike! From one cane guy to another. I know how much work and time it takes.
I may order a few tubes from you soon to check out the French stuff.
all the best
Why is it that I feel the start of negotiations for a cartel developing.
Charge in ALL your costs. Add a profit, taxes etc. Decide whether it is worth your while…
Quality viz a viz price has to be added into the equation.
Who has info on quality vs price? per kilo, per tube, per working reed, per reed maker?
Pwt
It probably comes down to what best suits your style of reedmaking. So far I’ve worked with Spanish cane mostly. A few months back I got some Californian cane from Joseph. I’ve found it to be a different creature from the Spanish cane both in making the reed (Californian is a little stiffer and less forgiving) and in sound (Californian has a noticeably brighter tone).
I recently bought the Heart of the Instrument and noted that one of the makers preferred French cane to Californian.
Which maker is this?
Sorry, looks like I was wrong. Andreas Rogge is the maker that prefers French cane to Spanish cane but he doesn’t mention Californian. He adds that it’s hard to get good French cane.
FYI, on the DVD Cillian O’Briain uses Spanish cane and Geoff Wooff uses Californian cane. I don’t recall whether Benedict Koehler specifies what type of cane he uses.
I believe he uses California cane also.
…i’m chewing up some of it right now, as a matter of uninterest 
If I’m not mistaken, a lot of Bassonists and some Oboe-ists prefer the French to the Spanish.
(Yes.. Yes.. Hello everyone..)
Dionys
French cane is prefered by oboe (etc.) players because it is hard. Soft cane doesn’t hold up very well in wet reeds. Mike says they have soft french cane.
I am surprized to hear PJ saying he found the Sampson cane stiffer and brighter than spanish cane. The california cane I supply is usually softer, more flexable and less bright than the harder spanish or french cane. There is plenty of hard california cane. Perhaps PJ got an errant hard tube of Sampson cane. Anyone want to compare cane quality from the various sources? Sounds like a tough project.
It could also be my particular way of making reeds.
PJ, I have my doubts about that. For certain, the reed is the largest factor in the tone of a particular chanter. I find the largest factor in the tone of a working reeed is the quality of the cane used in it. For any method, harder cane will produce a brighter reed and softer cane will produce a darker, mellower tone in the same chanter. I know of no reed making method that will reverse that observation. Hard cane requires a thin scrape to begin to vibrate, while soft cane will begin to crow with a minimal scrape and should end up thicker at the lips in the finished reed than hard cane. It is the extra mass of pith and less sap carrying bundles in soft cane that allows it to vibrate in a thicker scrape. Hard cane may have about the same number of bundles in the finished scrape, but the lesser mass, due to the thinner scrape, yields a brighter tone.
To follow up on the French cane, I’ve now made 3 nice reeds with the cane I got from Mike. I’ve very happy with it. At approx. 23 mm, it’s a little narrower than the Spanish and Californian cane I have (most of which is in or around 25 mm).
The cane I got from Mike was cut into tubes of between 5 and 7 inches. All of the tubes were very straight and nicely cut (no frayed bits at the end) and no water marks.
Also, it might be my imagination, but a slip of the French cane feels lighter than an equivalent sized slip of Californian or Spanish cane.
Huh??? I have found Medir’s cane to be the direct opposite. MUCH harder with the batches I have received. I have heard that Medir’s cane varies quite a bit. I can’t really imagine anything being softer than Joseph’s stuff and still being workable from what I have received. I won’t be ordering any of Medir’s cane as long as I can get Californian cane. I have placed 2 orders from Joseph and the cane is nice and soft. I love working with it. You do have to work it differently than the harder cane I have found.
I got a tube of Mike’s French cane. It had a very fine perfect grain that I have never seen before, and was medium as far as softness goes to me. I would say it was softer than Medir but harder than the California. Though you can’t really tell what a batch of cane is like by having only 1 tube. The tube I got was very nice. Mike’s drone cane is also nice.
Definitely depending on your style of reedmaking we have 2 very nice cane sources!
Medir does offer a softer cane specifically for uilleann pipe reeds. I have ordered this cane in the past and found it very workable material. While I prefer Cali-cane, the softer Medir product is good cane (for UPs) and well worth the price IMHO.
Ahhhh, brings back some fond memories.
Ahhhh Davy, I knew you’d find it first. 
I hope it is informative and not to long.
All the best,
Hi Joseph
It was happenstance - razzsmaster and boyd are getting good at finding vids as well
David