A neighbour asked me to fit a reed in a practise set that his son is going to start learning on .I dont know the maker but the chanter was easy to reed ,in fact some reeds I had laying around fitted well without adjustment The thing is that the reeds are of different strength from really easy and light up to firm. So in your opinion what strength reed would be best for a total beginner ?
RORY
With the benefit of hindsight i’d say not too easy, since i/beginners tend to blow it to pieces, plus i found/find it easier to control bag pressure/pumping the bellows with a reed that won’t either squeak up into second octave or misbehave with the slightest provocation.
On the other hand i almost burst a vein the first time i tried a set with a firm reed/setup.. Still i’d say not too easy/light.
Hi, Rory:
For my first year or so I relied on a pretty easy-playing/soft reed. Being able to hit the second octave easily made me less prone to tensing up every muscle in my upper body excessively. This in turn made it easier for me both to relax my arms and shoulders, and to begin to develop bag-pressure nuance.
Now that I’ve a few years of daily practice under my belt, I prefer medium-hard-playing reeds, for the usual reasons – less squeaking, more volume, more solid back D/C/C#, better stability overall. But starting out on the easier reed helped me get to the point of being able to appreciate all that. 
I imagine this is a fairly individualistic thing!
Regards,
Mick
Thanks for the advice guys, I was going to give him the really light reed because its easy to blow, but playing it for awhile myself I’d say its not easy to control ,well not for a beginner anyway,so I’ll fit what I would think a medium reed and see how he get on.
RORY