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Medir Reeds anyone?

15K views 45 replies 8 participants last post by  The Dude 
#1 Ā·
I have seen these reeds on sale in the Netherlands but I know nothing about them
there is a web site
http://www.medir.cat/vella/angles/tot.htm
the company appears to be located in in Girona, Spain but the website doesn't really specify where the factory is.
Does anyone know about them?
 
#3 Ā·
well, Spain has a large territory of the Ebro delta which is VERY rich in Arundo donax and Girona is right there in the area and not too far from the French Camargue...... they also say their cane is organic , which is not hard to believe since cane is an plague really
 
#4 Ā·
If you get a box I would love to find out how many of the reeds are free from dark streaks (when held up to the light) indicating much heavier fibers than the surrounding. I have been told that the best reeds have none.

Larry Teal wrote that only cane from var was any good. BUT that was a long time ago and perhaps as the plants age, like wirh wine grape vines, the product gets better.
 
#5 Ā·
It's funny that I live in Barcelona and have never seen these reeds at any shop I go to nor heard of them. I will however ask around to see if anyone has tried them. I looked at the website and in fact their prices are quite cheap for here, with a pack of 10 tenor reeds selling for 25ā‚¬. Vandoren Trads go for just under 4ā‚¬ each in Barcelona so that is a good deal. Of course it's not if they aren't good quality or don't play the way you like. However, I am definitely going to check them out because reeds have been a big pain lately (the weird weather maybe) and I am tired of paying a premium to be tortured.

As to the company, they are actually located in the town of Palamos, on the Mediterranean coast in the province of Girona--not in the town of Girona, which is farther inland. The cane comes from right around there according to the webpage about the cane. Since it is only in Spanish and Catalan those who don't read either of those two languages might not understand the caption for the picture on the upper right-hand side of the page which says that it is a picture of a typical cane plantation (caƱaberal) in the area around Palamos.

(BTW, the word caƱaberal (kan ya bear al) is also spelled caƱaveral (b and v are often interchanged), which you might recognize as the name of the famous cape in Florida where the Kennedy Space Center is. Americans call it Cape Canaveral but its original name is Cabo CaƱaveral. A caƱaveral is a plantatiion or an area dense with cane, so it seems fairly certain that it was named that by the Spanish some 300 years before Space shuttles were ever launched there because it was overgrown with cane.)
 
#6 Ā·
Is this the same area that Olivieri reeds came from? I used to use those reeds on alto, and thought they were quite good. Of course that was in the early 70's... and that company is no more, except as a brand name (currently owned by Muncy Winds?)

If it is the same area, then the Medir reeds might be worth a try. There was certainly nothing wrong with the cane in Olivieris.
 
#8 Ā·
Medir has got in touch with me after I emailed them and told me that they are a company with a long history (they have bee founded in 1916.....so almost 100 years old!).They also informed me that the link I gave at the beginning is to an old and incomplete site, while this one is a more modern one

http://www.medir.cat/
 
#9 Ā·
Yes that's the address I found by googling, however many of the pages don't come up in other than Spanish or Catalan, which is a shame for people in other countries. They say that if you contact them they'll send a sample (of what it doesn't say), so I sent them my data and commehted that I play tenor in hopes that they'll send me a tenor reed to try. I assume that would be the logical thing they'd do if they want to capture new customers. So we'll see.
 
#11 Ā·
Talk about promptness, they seem to be quite interested in new customers no matter how long they've been in business because almost immediately after I wrote them I received an email from Carles Medir asking me what hardness of tenor reed I would like to receive as a sample. Stupidly I had forgotten to mention it in the comment section of their online form. So sometime in the next week I should be receiving one of these reeds and we'll see what we shall see. If they are any good I'm definitely going to buy some from their online shop.

They also have a really nice looking sax swab for 10.55ā‚¬ on their sax page, which seems a really reasonable price. I don't know the brand--Kolbl--do you Andre? It's this one:

 
#15 Ā·
Yeah, I saw those for all sizes but what do you do with those, cut your own reeds? Or do they just wholesale them to other reed makers?
 
#18 Ā·
Well thanks Andre, that was very interesting and enlightening about the whole process even though I only understand a handful of words in German. It really gave me an insight into what goes into the making of a reed. However I can't see the point of all that DIY effort needed to go through all the steps just to make something that you can buy already made by people who specialize in it. Never mind the cost of all those specialized pieces of equipment, which from the prices on their website would run you a minimum of 3,500ā‚¬. How many reeds would you have to make and use for that to be a cost effective investment? Unless money is no problem for you and you are a woodworking type to begin with. IMO the time needed to make them which could better be spent actually playing the damn things on your instrument, unless of course you got so good at it that you could actually sell them as custom-made reeds with your own brand-name.
 
#19 Ā·
I donā€™t have any wish to make my own reeds, life is way too complicated and short for that but there are people who make all sorts of things as a form of hobby, things that are complex making and end up costing a lot more that having it made by people who know what they are doing
 
#20 Ā·
I didn't think you did any more than I do, but it is very interesting to know about. It reminds me of a program I saw about tying your own flies for fly fishing. There are many men who do that as a hobby and I assume they do it not just to catch fish with them, but for the pleasure of the hobby and, I'm guessing, probably to have a good excuse to get away from the wife and kids for awhile.
 
#21 Ā·
Through all the "noise" of misguided info/commercial apps/etc I learn so much & see such interesting info on this forum. Milandro thx for the video.

As "Jazz is all" says, sometimes it's not the return on the money, it's for the pleasure of making your own stuff (like fly fishermen tying their own flies). Good overview of Cabo CaƱaveral.

Looking forward to your views of the Medir reeds.
 
#22 Ā·
Well these people are really on the ball. I got a small packet with 2 #3 tenor reeds in the mail today. There was a very nice letter addressed to me with info about their products and the various ways of ordering and paying for them. Very modern, using internet and paypal or credit cards etc. Same day turnaround for small orders too. Wow. They also enclosed a flyer for the Musikmesse in Frankfurt on the 21st to 24th of this month where they will have a stand. If anyone is going they are in Hall 1.1, stand B26 should you be interested in seeing their stuff. I'm not shilling for them btw, just passing on the info for anyone interested in trying new reeds, as I assume they will be giving out samples there too.

Over the next couple of days I'll be breaking in these reeds giving them a few warmup plays to see what they are like. I'm hoping that they'll be to my liking because the price is right and the service is door to door in a jiffy.
 
#24 Ā·
Yeah, I'm pleasantly surprised, especially since they are local but I'd never heard of them nor seen their reeds anywhere here. So I've got my fingers crossed in hopes that they play really well and are consistent from reed to reed. I'm tired of playing Vandoren open-the-blue-baggie-surprise-package roulette. Last one I opened came out with a tiny chip out of the tip and a strand loose on one edge.
 
#26 Ā·
It's probably a marketing and inventory issue now that I think about it. For all the world-class image it likes to project, Barcelona is still fairly provincial in many ways, and the rest of CataluƱa even more so (its whole population is only 6 million). In Barcelona (where half of that population lives) there may be only 6 decent music stores carrying band instruments (usually Jupiter, Keilwerth and Yamaha with a couple having Selmer). Of those only 2, AFAIK, specialize in woodwinds as well as quality woodwinds. My tech's shop, Atelier del Viento (http://www.atelierdelviento.com/mitaller.htm) is the only one I know that also specializes in Vintage saxes and mouthpieces.

So the demand for reeds isn't that enormous to begin with, on top of which most music school and conservatory teachers tell their students to buy Vandoren or Rico reeds. So naturally that is all you find in the ordinary shops. They have no reason to invest in an inventory of Hemke, Alexander, Gonzalez, Rigotti, LegerƩ etc. because nobody who shops there even knows about them or would buy them. The specialty shops have a larger selection but they too don't carry the less commonly used brands either, for simple economics and because, the Vandoren/Selmer nexus is quite strong, so smaller companies can't compete equally with their marketing program (workshops, demos, expensive advertising, etc.) or the control their jobbers (in Madrid via France) exert over the market.

So I think that, as someone above said, Medir, which has been in business for 90 years, must mostly sell bulk cane and splits to other reed retailers. If that is true, it would be interesting to find out which ones, don't you think?
 
#27 Ā·
you mean to find out which reed brand sold at 300% the price that Medir charges on their site, sold in a shop wit a different brandname comes from the same factory? :) And who would tell you this thing if not medir themselves? (enraging those who buy from them in larger amounts than anyone would), and even if that was the case as with Marca and Rigotti, the owner of that other brand made by medir would say that brand X is made to higher specs and that they add a selective quality control that discards 75% of the reeds bringing the price where it now is.

I think the best thing to do is to evaluate Medir reeds for what they are and draw your conclusions from there, regardless of any other brand that they might be, or not, making.
 
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