'Had my horn sitting in the closet for 27 years. I picked it up a little over 2 years ago and am now having a blast playing in a band (blues/country/rockish). We have around 4-5 gigs/month, nothing too serious (can't give up the day job).
When I started playing again, I continued to use my high school horn & mpc, a HR Selmer S80 using Rico Royals, 2.5 to 3. I had a tough time with this combination. I then picked up a Claude Lakey Jazz mpc, then switched to Vandoren Jazz, and life started to get good. After a year, I switched to Fibracells* and things improved very quickly. I next got a Runyon Quantum 7, I absolutely loved it with the Fibracells, but my dog ate the mpc. And finally, I picked up a used metal Dukoff M 6 from
Merlin and am doing very well with it. For a change, I have ordered some
Legere synthetic reeds but I'm still waiting for them.
*I had a heck of a time with reeds until I switched to synthetics,
Fibracell medium-soft to be exact (tenor and soprano.) The absolute beauty of these reeds is consistency between reeds, ability to hit all the notes, and most importantly, you just slap them in and you're away...no worries about getting it moist. It really is amazing.
On the downside is the high price (in Canada anyway-$18 a pop), the tone quality isn't as good as with a really good cane reed (and how many of those are in a box of 5 or 10?) and they don't last as long as advertised.
In my situation, our band's PA is kinda crappy (I'm competing with guitars so I rarely play "unplugged") so this neutralizes the tone improvement with a really good cane reed. As well, my skills as an occasionally paid "amateur" are only so good so I'm nowhere near needing a thoroughbred to get me thru gigs. My good quality, moderately open mouthpiece with the Fibracell works very well for me. (My horn is a 1949 10M).
In all honestly, I couldn't believe how easy it was to play with synthetic reeds. For me, it was my Eureka moment.