[Trombone-l] equipment question

[Daniel Pliskin]

>> Excuse me, but if you don't like carving reeds, don't play oboe?
>
>
> Is it because the reeds are too expensive to buy ready made, or are oboists
> just fussy beings? As an ex-sax player and oboe doubler, I remember I had
> to saw about 1/8 inch off the end of the staple to bring it in tune. Guess
> I had a very loose embouchure.


The problems with buying reeds is that A) They are expensive.  B) They're only good for a little while.  Then you need to carve on them to get them to play well.  So, with a little more effort, you could start with a $1.00 piece of folded cane, tie your own reed and get it to where the bought one was, in about an hour of soaking and five minutes of actual work.

So why do oboe players always complain about making reeds?  Almost universally, they don't know how to sharpen a knife.  And if you can't sharpen a knife, you can't carve a reed.  They spend hours and hours trying to make reeds with dull knives and hours and hours complaining about those hours and hours of trying to make reeds with a dull knife.  But try to tell an oboe player how to sharpen a knife and you'll get all kinds of malarkey about how much they paid for their knives, how much their stones cost, how their teacher did it, etc.

My best knives cost about $10.00 for a piece of laminated Japanese steel, originally sold as a wood scribe for Japanese jointery fiends (of which I suppose I'm one).  In about an hour of reshaping and sharpening, I have a laminated steel scraper, which cuts cane easily and smoothly, and stays sharp.  And it costs about a tenth of what their Loree knives costs.  But for some reason, the Loree trademark is more important than being able to cut cane.  As we all know, it's way more fun to have something to complain about than it is to practice.

As for cutting an eight inch off the end of the staple, that too is an ego thing.  You can buy staples the correct length, but evidently that's not cool.  It's way cooler to make your reeds on a staple that's too long for your oboe and then you get to complain about it.  It was your oboe that was flat, not your embouchure.  I didn't experience "flat because of my embouchure" until I took up trombone.  If the reed is the correct length and width for your oboe, it plays in tune, period.

Then there's the whole tone thing, which is way too complicated for a trombone discussion group.

The next time you find yourself cornered by an oboist, who has to tell you about their reed-making woes, start telling then your personal history of which slide lube you switched to, over the years, and why you wanted/needed to switch.

DanP

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