if a synth reed won’t sound in the second octave at all, but plays in tune in the lower octave, what modifications are usually required?
Hi
The composite reeds I have made in the past work well in the second octave, but only in the lower regime.
The type of materials used in ready made sax and clarinet reeds are less forgiving when compared to cane, they tend to hold back in the secondary oxilliary regime in the top part of the reed making things very difficult to control there, just like when your reed has dried out and become stiffer.
I have tried various methods like differing rates of staple taper/length and eye sizes, even if you scrape the comp material down to a very thin section in the area mentioned, the same senario comes back to haunt you in the upper second octave, its as if the material has a memory which it wants to stay at.
Where the real problem lies is, within the resin densities of the off shelf
reeds found today, if a material could be found and mixed to mimic the flexability of cane then one would have a good platform to work from.
One last thing I would like to point out is, I have found that the primary oxilliary regime is much more sensitive to any changes found within any cone, than the second regime, so making and designing a reed which would work in most of the wider bored chanters found today is a non starter.
Are there any chemists out there who have worked on/with similar materials, who could throw any light upon this subject ?.
Bob May had some great luck with a mouth blown delrin chanter and polystyrene reed. I hosted a mini webpage for him for him in June 2001 but I don’t know what happened to his product as he was also making traditional practice sets.
Here’s the link:
Where the real problem lies is, within the resin densities of the off shelf
reeds found today, if a material could be found and mixed to mimic the flexability of cane then one would have a good platform to work from.
Davy:
Anima listed the following regarding a material that mimics mother nature in the cane cell structure. I wonder if the company could make reed slip blank of dimensions used for cane reeds?
John,
I sent 2 saxophone reeds to a pipemaker to see if he could/would do some experiments for me… he indicated he was unable to gouge it using traditional fabrication methods. I called the manufacturer to see if I could get one long ‘slip’ to work with. I spoke to the owner the company and he wasn’t cooperative about letting out any trade secrets.
I suspect the reeds are cast from a mould as there is a satin finish that looks too smooth to have come from a sanding or reed shaping machine typical to the ones used for cane reeds.
I emailed them once and never heard back so I called the fibracell folks a few months ago and the woman on the other end was positively rude, wouldn’t even talk to me, swore up and down bagpipe reeds couldn’t be made from the stuff and refused to even sell me some “blanks” to give it a try. It all left me with a sour taste in my mouth.
It’s too bad they are so closed minded, they’re sitting on quite a bit of business if a successful reed could be fashioned, not to mention dealing with wonderful folks
I have been in contact with several companies, Legere and Fibracell being amongst them.
One company was interested so I sent them some of my reeds kits, they said it could be done, but would not be worth doing because the tooling needed to grind the special shapes for the vast array of different chanter designs would be way to expensive, this and them not having an in house expert who could test the reeds afterwards, make it a non starter.
They say they are looking at many millions of units and not thousands.
The main problems with uilleann reeds lies in the non standardisation of our industry, the rest of the piping world IE highland pipes only work in the one octave, their primative design is way behind, or should I say the Irish pipe reeds were always way ahead of the rest when it came to being technical.
I have studied oboe reeds made from composite materials and spoken to oboe players and the result was that they preferred the natural to the man made reeds for better overall control.
I have also tried composite reeds in my own clarinet and oboe and the result are the same, the embouchure is harder to control with the composite reed.
I guess that a composite reed could be mass made, but its going to take a lot of investment to get the machinery that will make each and every reed the same, and that would be just for one makers chanter design.
One way to standardise our industry, would be for someone like the music giants Yamaha to take them on board and flood the market, but who’s dimensions would they choose to work from, probably no one’s, take a selection of top makers wares and then make thier own I would guess.
Davy,
I spoke to Mr. Legere (who was much more pleasant than the guy at Fibracell) and he wanted me to send him a working reed that he could reverse engineer. They have some sophisticated laser 3D scanner that feeds the information into a computer so they can generate models of the finished shape.
They are of the mindset to make a finished product. I explained to him, the variances from chanter to chanter made it unfeasable for a ‘one size fits all’ reed and that copies of a pregouged slip would be the way to go… still leaving the final shaping and fabrication in the hands of the reedmaker.
if you don’t mind me using your idea as a suggestion, I’d like to try again with fibracell with the pregouged slip idea. it would appear that they’ve done something unique with their chemistry and it would be a shame not to be able to take advantage of it. An uilleann reed from them would only have to include the slip, a staple, and a small amount of binding - or just the slip. Anyway, let me know if that would be okay with you and i’ll give them a call
The first time I tried to build a chanter using the Daye method, I also tried the yogurt cup plastic reed. I ended up with a reed that functioned fairly well in both octaves. Unfortunately my impatience and ignorance about the chanter throat dimensions led me astray. I kept adjusting the reed and not the throat and ended up destroying the reed, breaking down and buying the chanter outright with a working reed. I think it’s time to try the plastic experiment again. I had had good luck with polystyrene hobbyist’s sheet plastic in .030" thickness. The reed has to be a little narrower than the standard. Maybe 10.5-11 mm? If all else fails I’ve heard credit card plastic works well when cut up for reeds.
still perfecting…using .040 styrene plastic sheets with two layers superglued together. i’m thinking of getting .1 styrene next time and just going with one layer. cant’ seem to get them to hold their curvature and any attempt at a bridle just stops up the reed entirely.
Do you have the ability to heat form the plastic?
Here are some pictures of an abandoned reed project. You might get some ideas from this: http://www.angar.net/reeds/PIC00003.jpg http://www.angar.net/reeds/PIC00005.jpg http://www.angar.net/reeds/PIC00006.jpg
Since reeds are sanded on a drum anywhere from 1 3/4" to 2" in diameter, my thoughts were to form the plastic to that diameter and shape the outside of the reed by making a traditional scrape. I would hope it would behave more like a cane reed instead of a 2 layer ‘yougurt’ container reed.
I’ve tried the one thick piece(sand. scrape, sand sand sand sand) and find the two piece to be more reliable. I thinkk I ended up with the best result using .030 plastic. I also got the gouge curvature by binding the plastic with dental floss (before gluing) to a drinking glass and running it under a hot water tap for a few seconds at 150-160 farenheit. Unbind when cool.
The second layer is supposed to help with the octave jump, but I had to scrape that pretty well too. Somewhere on the net, Casey Burns has an article on his experiments with plastic reeds. He seemed to get results.
Something from the lunatic fringe:
Matchbox toy comapny used to make a vacuform toy for forming matchbox bodies. It melts plastic sheet with a low wattae light bulb and forms it with a simple pull suction into a form. I have one from when I was a kid, and think a mold/dye form in the shape of a reed could be fashioned to preforn reed slips. If not for uilleann pipes, then at least for small pipe and practice chanters. Ask your 20 something kids or nephews if they had the toy when they were little, and if they might borrow it. I think it was produced from the late 70’s to the mid 80’s.
