[Roger Aldridge]

On other threads I've talked about how I've had problems with Legere reeds on some of my Morgan mouthpieces. Of course, the mouthpieces sound wonderful with cane reeds. I've been curious about why there is this problem with Legeres on some Morgans.

As an experiment, I sent one of my Morgan 6C tenor mouthpieces to Brian & Erik (two mouthpiece guys Ralph Morgan trained) along with a new Legere reed to see if they could improve the mouthpiece's performance with Legere. I have two 6C tenor mouthpieces. One of them works perfectly fine with #2.5 regular Legere tenor reeds. The other (which I sent) has more resistance, is a bit overly dark, and does not have as much "life" and resonance as the 6C I use for all of my tenor playing.

The mouthpiece was turned around in record time. (Thanks Brian & Erik!) And, it now plays BEAUTIFULLY. Night and day difference. It took only one note to tell me that Brian & Erik's adjustments did the trick to enable Legere reeds to work well on this mouthpiece.

Brian enclosed a note telling me what they did. Here's what it says: "The curve was long and it was slightly too open. We corrected these issues and trimmed the rails in a little. Seems to be responding much better now."

It's been my experience that when one has a good mouthpiece and ligature match with Legere, the reeds can sound stunningly beautiful.

As a next step in my experiments with Legere reeds and Morgan facings I'm going to send an old Morgan RM06 clarinet mouthpiece to Walter Grabner to see if he optimize it for Legere Quebec clarinet reeds. The 1.06 mm tip opening on the RM06 is comparable to that on a Grabner K13 Kaspar. I recently tried Legere Quebec reeds in #3 and #3.25 strengths on the RM06 and they sounded TERRIBLE. However, the same reeds sound truly beautiful on my Grabner K11 and K14 mouthpieces. I'm extremely curious about what Walter will discover when he works on the RM06.

I'll post a follow up on this thread to let you know how it turns out.....

Roger

 

[mlscnr]

This clearly illustrates how important it is that the vamp cut of the reed match up with the facing curve of the mouthpiece. Thanks for that, Roger.

And fwiw, I finally tried a Legere alto reed (#3), and found it didn't work for me on any mouthpiece. But I have a spare mpc that I could send to Brian and Erik...

 

[Roger Aldridge]

Exactly!

Several years ago when I first started trying Legere reeds I quickly saw their potential. However, I discovered that they don't work well on some mouthpieces and with some ligatures.

Walter Grabner describes his clarinet facings as being "optimized" for Vandoren V12 reeds. However, I discovered that Legere -- especially, the thicker cut of the Quebec Legere clarinet reed -- works amazingly well on Walter's mouthpieces.

In some cases it comes down to individual mouthpieces. I have a local sax buddy who didn't care for Morgan mouthpieces that much until he tried Legere reeds on a Morgan Excalibur. For whatever subtle reason, the facing on that Excalibur is a good match for Legere reeds. Whereas, I don't get very good results with Legere on an Excalibur I have in my mouthpiece box.

It goes to show how subtle and important the facing curve is.

Roger