yrly
06-24-2004, 06:04 PM
Symmetricut reeds have returned in the form of rather cheap student reeds but has anyone besides me used the original Symmetricut reeds from Ciccone? I stumbled across these somewhat by accident as it turns out. In band in high school I had used LaVoz which I hated (could never get any sort of good sound out of them, I always sounded flat). Vandoren which I also disliked, playable but just were not my cup of tea. Rico in the orange box, which for some odd reason I could only use if I got very soft reeds which sounded mushy. One day it turned out I had run out of reeds and was not going to pay the $2.75 my band teacher wanted for Vandorens, a place near here sold boxes for less and usually I would just buy a box. For whatever reason I stopped at this local shop instead that has been in business forever and is independently owned. He had a bunch of clearance reeds from companies I had never heard of, so I thought I would give some a whirl, he only wanted $.30 a piece for them. I bought 5 Ciccone Symmetricuts and a box of these Niederdorfer reeds which were even cheaper, and a couple of Brillharts (I think they were called). I did not expect anything special when I went to band the next day and tried one out, chose the Symmetricut first because they were without a box. First note that I played sounded fantastic, clear, had more volume than anything else I had ever used and was incredibly easy to play the full range of notes. Even my band teacher was surprised when he heard me play some practice notes. I did not tell him what exactly I was using because he probably would have still tried to get me to buy his Vandoren reeds, but there was no denying the difference. The Niederdorfers were virtually the same as LaVoz, and I have not used one since, but the Ciccone Symmetricuts were absolutely amazing. I returned and bought a few different hardnesses (regardless of the hardness even the worst of these were heads above anything else I had used to date) and eventually 2 boxes which got me through the rest of my senior year of school. I returned to buy some supplies when I bought my vintage King sax a few months ago and he still had them sitting there untouched since my last visit so I bought 3 more boxes. Upon buying the King I realized it was not just my Yamaha sax, these were also great for the King. The supply is there but limited, only a few boxes left. I will eventually buy them all, after playing these against other stuff I don't think I could stand to play with anything else. I have played with them for five years now and am so used to how they perform, I tried a different reed when I got the King and could not even make a sound. As soon as I tried the Symmetricut I might as well have been playing my Yamaha, sound was like I had owned the King for years. The problem is that Ciccone is not the company behind these anymore and the modern version is basically junk compared to these. Eventually what is there will be gone, and should I need more I would desperately need more. While I would be open to suggestions to anything comparable, I would much more appreciate if anyone knew a rather untraveled local place like where I found these that still had some, probably not too many around but there could be another such place with a stockpile waiting to be discovered.