I have cane now from 3 sources… Tim Brittons kit, Na Piobiari Uilleann, and Sampson cane. I am not sure where the britton cane comes from, the Na piobiari cane is from Spain, and the Sampson cane is what they advertise as med hardness California cane. My favorite to work with is the Spanish cane. It behaves well when I carve or scrape and the sanding is slow so I can get to even dimensions easily. All of my best reeds are from that source. The britton reeds look like Spanish reed and they are my second best. The Samson California reeds are really different. The wood of the cane looks more porous. When gouging its easy to pull up too much material. And sanding removes material fast. Most of the reeds I have made from this stuff are just ok. However, I know many reed makers have posted that the California cane is the best? And my pipe/ reed maker uses CA cane.
So I wondered if it was a hardness or density issue. I tried Dayes’s dunk test. Britton cane 50%, Na Piobiari Spanish cane 52%, and the Sampson cane 53%. Those are too close to tell me much and according the Daye’s post they are all on the high side of soft.
Hi Bob,
Spanish is my favourite to use too, and the one I’ve been most successful with.
As far as I can see the Califonian cane’s fibers are much wider apart. It is a lot softer in pulp density. Whether this means the cane vibrates/oscillates better I don’t know, but with it being softer I believe you can keep the reed lips/blades thicker. Maybe this why others like it for reeding? Like you, my skill level seems to suit using spanish cane.
I also have some French and Argentine cane which is really hard!
Tim’s is spanish. NPU got theirs from Sampson (both Cali.). Spanish is considerably different from Cali (Joe’s stuff). I have some great Spanish and it gouges differently from my Cali. Also (and perhaps the most important aspect is), the difference in sound is the Spanish stuff sounds more compressed e.g. the audio “compressed,” and linear than the Cali. Simply put; like ‘hi-fidelity’/smoothe. The Cali cane has a more open sound. Crunchier, which means more pronounced mids, and upper mids.
Of course, you’re never going to get 2 reeds to sound the same, so doing a serious A/B test on a analyzer is nothing I’ll ever embark on. Also, and of course, how you make the reed… blablaalabla
Anyhow…
The above is not a rule, but it’s been my experience w/ to supplies of very good stuff!
Here’s what Ted (Anderson) wrote about CA and Spanish cane last summer in a thread titled “volume of narrow-bore concert pipes” (link included in case you want to read the whole thing)
The other secret is if you live in the desert, or an esp dry climate, or even during the winter indoor blues, you’ll find the softer CA cane that Ted talks about to be very much to your liking. If I remember my stories correctly, I think Dan Sullivan liked to harvest dead specimens, or decaying, which probably eliminated the curing time and process used with most commercial Spanish. Years ago we posted pictures of this kind of stuff and you could see the darker markings on the decaying bark…almost black. The French cane I ordered (and still have) was very hard and unusable…but that stuff was harvested for instruments that are use to moisture, like the oboe. There’s a whole lot more written here about this if you know the key words to search for.
Currently, I use Gonzalez, which is an Argentine strain. It is very dense, but most of the tubes I get are pretty round and few irregularities. My next batch, I’m going to try Medir and Sampson and hopefully Rigotti, so I can draw my own conclusions.
Thanks for the posts and the links. That info is exactly what I needed and explains a lot for me… Off to experiment more with the Sampson cane as it seems that while it may be a little more work to make the reed, the result may be better.
One correction to a post by BRAZENCANE. The NPU cane that I got was medir Spanish. I got an email confirmation of that, and Tim britton confirmed that his was as well. I suspect that NPU must change what they offer from time to time as I have noticed that BRAZENCANE tends to be very well informed with his information.
NPU used to sell both. The soft cane, when I find it, has been tested at 45% with the dunk test. I have tried Chinese and Australian cane as well. Both were quite hard. The soft cane is what Paddy Keenan said I referred to as the “gold”. Dan Sullivan used to supply the soft cane to Leo Rowsome. He harvested it on Sonoma creek, but the Arundo police have wiped it out in that area. I could harvest a container load of hard cane within an hour of my house. I travel over two hours to get soft cane and even then only part of it is soft. The harder cane is still different than Medir cane, giving reeds which have a richer tone. I am harvesting this year, as I let my supplies dwindle, but won’t have any for sale for a while. I still have drone cane which is harvested growing straight up from the rhysomes, so it is more round and even walled than the branches from larger cane, which grow more horizontally.
