good reed strength comparison chart

**roofrabbit** · 10-21-2008, 03:14 AM

Can you please recommend a thorough and accurate chart for comparing strengths of saxophone reeds by brand?

**Peterogping** · 10-21-2008, 07:26 AM

DoctorSax has snagged this collection from SOTW:
http://www.doctorsax.biz/reed_comp.htm

It does not answer your question because they differ individually. Personally, I trust the Vandoren chart most, but it only covers their own reeds plus some Rico brands.
I doubt you can find an accurate chart because as we all know, the reeds in a box differ in strength.

**Raspberry 007** · 10-21-2008, 01:33 PM

For Rico Reeds, the Rico chart is very accurate. For Vandoren reeds, the Vandoren chart is very accurate. There is one big problem with the Rico chart, however, it forces standard block categorization of equally proportionate intervals when there is a lot of overlap for the average strength among reeds.

This is a very sore topic for me--I think I'll create my own reed chart with my personal reed factory and have SOTW members adjust it accordingly. Together, we can change the status quo reed charts.

Best,

MM · 10-21-2008, 04:38 PM

Great idea 007! Something to consider: maybe there ought to be different charts for different size saxes. I have suspected that the strength correlations are different from different manufacturuers for S,A,T,B saxes.

**retread** · 10-21-2008, 05:20 PM

And there's always the problem of the damned reeds being so inconsistent the charts are meaningless.

**Durand** · 10-22-2008, 03:23 AM

Hope these help

**Tobias** · 10-22-2008, 03:38 AM

This is the best I know:
http://www.saxophon-service.de/shop/z_57.htm

**retread** · 10-22-2008, 03:02 PM

Originally Posted by Tobias

This is the best I know:
http://www.saxophon-service.de/shop/z_57.htm

That's the first chart I've seen that gets Legere right.

**Durand** · 10-22-2008, 03:21 PM

Originally Posted by retread

That's the first chart I've seen that gets Legere right.

yeah, nice chart.
I have copied it to excel so I can compare easily between two brands using excel filters

**TJS** · 10-28-2008, 10:10 PM

Originally Posted by ftttf007

For Rico Reeds, the Rico chart is very accurate. For Vandoren reeds, the Vandoren chart is very accurate. There is one big problem with the Rico chart, however, it forces standard block categorization of equally proportionate intervals when there is a lot of overlap for the average strength among reeds.

This is a very sore topic for me--I think I'll create my own reed chart with my personal reed factory and have SOTW members adjust it accordingly. Together, we can change the status quo reed charts.

Best,

Originally Posted by MM

Great idea 007! Something to consider: maybe there ought to be different charts for different size saxes. I have suspected that the strength correlations are different from different manufacturuers for S,A,T,B saxes.

I agree that this is a great idea. I have my own chart that I have been compiling for a while. I can put it on my website if anybody is interested and people can let me know if there are any changes they would want to make. Let me know if you want to try this out.

**milnak** · 10-29-2008, 07:14 AM

I took the liberty of cleaning up the charts and converting them to PDF. (Hopefully I didn't make any mistakes in the conversion!) Enjoy.

reed strength - clarinet.pdf

reed strength - saxophone.pdf

**JasonG** · 10-31-2008, 12:57 PM

Nice job!

The sax one seems pretty accurate, but my beef with the clarinet one is that I don't find V12 3.5's to be any harder than Classique 3's, and it shows them as almost a whole strength harder. The Classiques definitely run harder than the V12's, as far as I've found.

**TJS** · 10-31-2008, 03:31 PM

Originally Posted by milnak

I took the liberty of cleaning up the charts and converting them to PDF. (Hopefully I didn't make any mistakes in the conversion!) Enjoy.

reed strength - clarinet.pdf

reed strength - saxophone.pdf

Thanks. Looks great. Can you also attach it as a spreadsheet?

**harmonizerNJ** · 10-31-2008, 04:37 PM

Originally Posted by milnak

I took the liberty of cleaning up the charts and converting them to PDF. (Hopefully I didn't make any mistakes in the conversion!) Enjoy.

reed strength - clarinet.pdf

reed strength - saxophone.pdf

These charts are very helpful. I will offer one comment, based on my recent playing of LaVoz and Rico Jazz Select reeds on my alto sax:
I find the RJS 2H to be very slightly harder (on average) than LaVoz Medium. So, I would not put the LaVoz Medium reeds "to the right" of the column for the Rico Jazz Select 2H.

I don't know if the situation with tenor is any different, since I don't play tenor.

**retread** · 10-31-2008, 04:45 PM

Originally Posted by harmonizerNJ

These cha
I find the RJS 2H to be very slightly harder (on average) than LaVoz Medium. So, I would not put the LaVoz Medium reeds "to the right" of the column for the Rico Jazz Select 2H.

It seems the same to me on tenor.

**Durand** · 10-31-2008, 04:50 PM

Given that inside a box of reeds you can find high variations, these charts have to be evaluated after playing several reeds from one brand versus several reeds of another brand, in order to make an average that can be close to the reality.
I suggest that it would be a good theme for a research,, scientifically made, to establish a good and reliable chart. Maybe only for the most known brands.
I think that evaluating reeds are like wine tasting.