{"id":46722,"date":"2018-02-25T11:55:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-25T19:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/?p=46722"},"modified":"2024-06-25T09:17:29","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T16:17:29","slug":"legere-reeds-the-olds-super-intonation-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/2018\/legere-reeds-the-olds-super-intonation-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"L\u00e9g\u00e8re reeds + the Olds Super = intonation problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"L\u00e9g\u00e8re<\/a>I have been using premium synthetic reeds exclusively since 1998. Why? Simply put, because I double in most bands that I play in, and can’t be worried about getting my reed wet before putting the sax or clarinet to my lips and blowing my first note. This is especially true in pit work where you sometimes have less than two bars to switch horns and play the next series of notes.<\/p>\n

The second reason I play premium synthetics exclusively is because I don’t want the hassles of fiddle f#*!ing around cane. Been there; done that; bought the T-shirt. Life is too short to worry about the break-in period; sealing the pores of the reed; filing; etc, etc… You know, all that stuff you were taught by your instructor when he\/she taught you how to look after your reeds to make them play well and last. (And that was in old days, when a box of good quality cane reeds didn’t cost the equivalent of a night’s work at a club.)<\/p>\n

L\u00e9g\u00e8re reeds don’t work on necessarily every horn<\/h3>\n

For the past 8 or so years I have been using L\u00e9g\u00e8re reeds<\/a> exclusively on all my saxophones and clarinets. For the most part I use the Signature Series, and have never had a problem with them on the 20+ instruments that have had them fitted to the mouthpieces…. That is until this month.<\/p>\n

If you subscribe to The Bassic Sax Blog, you know that I got an Olds Super tenor<\/a> from Chadd at World Wide Sax<\/a>, and that my tech David Gsponer at Matterhorn Music<\/a> restored it for me. Since I got the Olds back from David, I took it to exactly one rehearsal of the jazz combo I play in. It sounded beautiful playing both the lead lines, and background fills for all five decades of jazz music we play.<\/p>\n

After its outing at the Dizzy Souls rehearsal however, the horn started to leak, and suffer from significant intonation issues. Due to David’s schedule, and my re-injured back, I wasn’t able to get the Olds back in for its post-restoration tune-up until earlier this week.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday David found and fixed quite a few serious leaks on the horn, but when I tried the non-leaking Olds, the intonation was still horrendous. Anything above A2 was between 40 to 50 cents sharp. Anything in the low-end of the horn was flat roughly the same amount.<\/p>\n

I tried 5 to 6 new mouthpieces David had in stock, plus a few vintage pieces as well. These pieces all had different chamber types; baffles; as well as tip openings. In short, they were all very different, but they, along with my vintage Dukoff 7*, all produced the same horrendous intonation described above.<\/p>\n

Then it came to me: The only variable we hadn’t ruled out was the type of reed. I had already swapped out my L\u00e9g\u00e8re Signature for a brand new one to make sure it wasn’t simply a “fatigue” thing that the reeds can suffer from as they get too many hours of use. Could it therefore be that the Olds simply didn’t like<\/em> synthetic reeds?<\/p>\n

I did have a Rico Plasticover in a Reed Guard, so \"Plasticover<\/a>I tried that. Low and behold, near perfect intonation on any mouthpiece I re-tried at David’s shop.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

David had no explanation for this. In all his years of experience in restoring, overhauling, and working on instruments, he had never seen a saxophone respond this extremely to synthetic reeds. Over the past few days I have continued the experiments at home by trying a variety of mouthpieces that I have here. As long as I use a cane reed, no intonation issues manifest themselves with the Olds.<\/p>\n

I am still experimenting with mouthpieces to find the one that brings out the best sound out of this vintage baby. One that is showing a fair amount of promise is a very vintage Tonalin 3* that David had stored in a box.<\/p>\n

Like so many other Tonalins of the era, its shank had suffered a crack. It had however, been fixed a long time ago, and reinforced on the outside with some kind of tape. If I do end up using it as my main piece for the Olds, David will make it a brass band like the English-made ones had.<\/p>\n

However, I do have a newer, unnumbered Tonalin, as well as a couple Ebolins, as well as a number of other vintage pieces to spend some time on to see how they play on the Olds. Now that the reed issue has been sorted out, it’s a whole new ballgame.<\/p>\n

I must admit I am enjoying the experimentation phase at the moment. The Olds really is an animal all to itself. It is unlike any other vintage tenor I have played before. It has some quirks and foibles that seem particular to it, but I’m not sure how much is the horn itself, and how much a role the oversized resos might be playing… But that is an article for another day.<\/p>\n

Other variables to try<\/h3>\n

Now you cane purists out there are likely cringing, or perhaps already typing a response to me in all caps along the lines of: PLASTICOVER REEDS ARE NOT TRUE CANE!!!!<\/p>\n

OK, sure I’ll give you the argument that the coating does change the properties of the reed enough to have it fundamentally behave and sound differently than uncoated cane… But then that’s the entire point of using them.<\/p>\n

I do have boxes of conventional cane reeds that I have left over from years ago when I still used cane\u2014when decent cane reeds were not scarcer than snow in the Florida Everglades. \ud83d\ude09  And to be fair, I ought to try at least one or two of those to see how the Olds Super performs with those compared to the Plasticover.<\/p>\n

Final thoughts<\/h3>\n

\"cartoon<\/a>I talked with Chadd on Friday, and the Olds Super alto he has for sale at WWS is similar in some of its tonal peculiarities to what I have encountered with my tenor.<\/p>\n

Although he has not tested it with a synthetic reed to see what its intonation is like vis-\u00e0-vis a cane reed, he has noticed that it too seems to want to default to a 1940s saxophone sound. It too responds best with certain kinds of mouthpieces. That said, a pro player from Seattle recently play-tested a bunch of horns at WWS, and the Olds Super was one of them. This player used an alto Guardala MP, and the horn seemed to play quite well with it.<\/p>\n

I remember when I play-tested that same Olds Super alto at WWS. I tried both of my standard alto MPs (a Runyon Custom and a Meyer), but neither made me like the horn enough to buy it. In hindsight, I’m wondering if it was the L\u00e9g\u00e8re reeds I was using?<\/p>\n

When all is said and done, it’s almost as if the Olds Super is a very classy 1940s woman, who does not like to be tarted up with extreme MPs, and fake reeds. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been using premium synthetic reeds exclusively since 1998. Why? Simply put, because I double in most bands that I play in, and can’t …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94],"tags":[41,150,238,259,633,548,644,239,630,643,31],"class_list":["post-46722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accessories-saxophone","tag-accessories","tag-american-saxophones","tag-cane-reeds","tag-legere","tag-musings","tag-olds-super","tag-photos","tag-synthetic-reeds","tag-tenor-saxophone","tag-vintage-horns","tag-vintage-sax"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t