Uh-oh. This is going to get ugly.

 

Listening to these comparison clips I think the sound sounds better without the reed booster. With it it sounds dampened and duller I thought........Oh well.......Never mind..........

 

Listening to these comparison clips I think the sound sounds better without the reed booster. With it it sounds dampened and duller I thought........Oh well.......Never mind..........

To me it sounded like you would expect if you stick something to the inside of the reed. Not very nice.

And (correct me if I'm wrong) the Bernoulli effect would be minimal at the kind of airspeed involved in playing an instrument. I believe the human cough or sneeze can be up to 50 mph, however I doubt that the speed of air on a reed in normal playing is anything even close to that. Maybe 10 - 20 miles an hour. How many conventional aeroplanes planes can take off at that speed?

I think the physics quoted in the marketing may need some closer scrutiny as a saxophone reed is not the same thing as a wing.

Plus there is an intersting claim of "more tone" I wonder what exactly does that mean? Although I agree the toe may be different, but is it more? is it better?

 

Let me say this, as one of the major skeptics on this board:

It actually looks like something that could work, with a plausible, but still to be proven, scientific explanation behind it. Unlike some of the devices that have been discussed on here lately. I remain skeptical, but it might be worth a try; or for no cost, you could probably just cut out a piece of tape at different thicknesses and experiment around.

This sort of thing falls into the category of something to try and decide for yourself. It also would be subject to the 'expectation' or placebo effect. In any case I think it could just as easily affect the reed negatively (by dampening it) as positively.

 

I can see buy that it will change tone. I wont venture to guess if it is better or worse. I wont bother to check myself. Frankly, it looks like something you could make by cutting out some self adhesive dense felt with a hole punch or from a sheet of rubber...or those little bumpers you can buy to keep kitchen cabinets from slamming.

I wont call this one complete snake oil but I do not buy for a second that it lengthens reed life. Maybe it makes a reed stay brighter by changing the way it vibrates but that is not making a reed last longer IMHO. Again, I do believe it will make a difference in tone but its really subjective if it delivers the changes claimed. After all, tonal range and clarity are in the ears of the beholder. Someone will try them..it will be interesting to get that opinion.

It is a lot easier than practicing.

 

Seems to me if you thicken the vamp of the reed you basically enhance the upper register and get less in the lows...basically they way a shorter facing enhances the high ranges of the horn. So it seems like a little object to rebalance a reed. That is just my gut feeling as to how it alters tone. Could be interesting but I'm not paying 20 bucks for dots to find out

 

I'm willing to assume the claims about the reed booster are marketing nonsense until proven otherwise, but has anybody tried the reeds? They might be OK, though the 'reed booster' hype does a lot to lessen the credibility of the claims for the reeds.

 

I'm willing to assume the claims about the reed booster are marketing nonsense until proven otherwise, but has anybody tried the reeds? They might be OK, though the 'reed booster' hype does a lot to lessen the credibility of the claims for the reeds. [I see in another thread that awholley did try them and the overall impression was 'meh', ok for marching band, probably not if you want a 'professional' quality sound]

 

Didnt even notice the reeds

Review

http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?238224-New-quot-Bravo-quot-synthetic-reeds

http://www.bestsaxophonewebsiteever.com/bravo-reeds/

http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=433598&t=433598

 

OMG, not another one of these things?

:faceinpalm::faceinpalm::shaking2::shaking2:opcorn:opcorn:

 

Oh yes, one more...

 

Maybe I should do a review with these, the buzz screw and the Klangbogen thing. Then again, maybe my horn would explode...........

 

I think you should, a fully gadget modified saxophone review.

I wish I had enough imagination to think up one of these bogus, er, I mean enhancing sound gadgets and market it. You could maybe make some bucks for awhile. Plastic stick on dots, they probably do something but who knows what it is. Aerodynamic engineering.

 

You guys go ahead and use it, I'm staying with the snake oil and voodoo dust....makes my reeds last forever....until they crap out....

 

I'm satisfied with the basic sax-mp-reed formula, but for fun, like someone mentioned, it looks like you could find something similar in the crafts section for experimenting. It looks too small to change the throat area, and the air speed is too slow (as mentioned) to be a fluids or flow factor. Its not affecting the stiffness in the recommended location either. Must be mass loading the reed - has anyone checked the note with the mouthpiece solo, or just on the neck? That would confirm.

 

Must be mass loading the reed...

Yeah, the mass loading thing again (where have I heard that one before? ).

I said I'd give this a try with a piece of tape, but man I'm having trouble with the idea of sticking something on the back of a reed! Seems to be a force field or something preventing me from doing it. Maybe tomorrow.

 

Wow. Just W-O-W. What's that old saying? "There's a sucker born every minute"?

 

I just got a chance (actually, was pressured, to be honest) to try these out for free at the JEN conference in NoLa, and to my great surprise they made a noticeable and desirable impact. On the reeds that I really like, it made them play just a little bit better, but on the reeds I was less fond of it improved them substantially.

I expected they would make the sound brighter, but this wasn't the case. If anything, they took some of the buzz out of the sound, and made the overall quality smoother and clearer. This was especially noticeable to me in the midrange left hand notes and going across the octave break. Also, sub-toning is a little easier, dynamics are a bit wider, and articulation/response was a bit faster and cleaner.

Moving them back and forth a bit (closer to/farther from the tip of the reed) yields different results, with more brightness and punch the closer you stick the thing to the tip.

The issue for me is price - at $15 for ten of them it seems very expensive. Fortunately, I've been greatly enjoying Legeres for the past 2-3 years, so one of these doodads will do for quite a while, assuming the adhesive doesn't give out quickly (which I suppose I will learn soon enough). The reed case compatibility is tricky too - I'll need to figure out exactly what works best because a reed with a booster on it won't fit in a standard reed case, and the case that they supply to accommodate 1 booster-ed reed fits very loosely with the thinner design of Legeres...

So, I initially like them quite a bit and will be trying to resolve the reed case issue.

Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, everybody! For those of you who are making fun of it without doing so, I might ask this question: How could putting something on your reed and inside your mouthpiece NOT make a difference? Whether you like the change would be a more relevant discussion...and of course, everyone will have a different experience, I am just sharing mine. I did speak to one other player getting her degree (PhD? DMA?) who somewhat sheepishly asked me if I'd tried them because her experience was akin to mine - strong skepticism, positive experience, terror of excommunication for admitting she liked them...LOL

 

Since this is easily applied and taken off, it will be relatively easy to make a series of controlled test which, I think, should have been provided by the maker in their advertising claims to support these hardly meaningful pseudo-scientific language they use on their site.

" Simply press a new, adhesive-backed Reed Booster onto a fresh reed and your whole set-up transforms, as if on steroids. The magic of Reed Booster is not magic at all-it's physics. By displacing mass on the reed, the Bernoulli Effect-the same force which keeps airplanes in the air-is harnessed. The airstream around the Reed Booster speeds up and with it a pressure differential is established within your mouthpiece's chamber...."

First of all, Bernoulli effect is NOT all this certainly ( and only in a very minor way) holding planes up in the air (http://www.physicsmyths.org.uk/bernoulli.htm https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/bernnew.html http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/290/what-really-allows-airplanes-to-fly ) but it does certainly exist and influences the movements of fluids, but although it undoubtedly exists, it does so NOT it the way these people ( whom so easily tell us they understand the physics of this gizmo) claim to understand its workings.

How can one use a principle badly explained and applied without a formal theory in order to explain something that they probably don't understand?

But that doesn't mean that this " thing" won't do anything. It will most certainly do something, somewhere, somehow.

Putting something on your reed will certainly make a difference, as much as take something off your reed ( remember people drilling holes or placing grooves in a reed?) the question is will it improve and more importantly, why?

Years ago I tried drilling holes in the reeds and it most certainly did shorten the lifespan of my reeds, various claims since the '30 that grooves would be improving the sound never resulted in a permanent way we shape our reeds though.

Anyway, when one introduces a product one needs to provide some proof backing up any claim, even more so when based on physics, if there is such a claim then proof will ne necessary, not quite so if one claims more emotion, but we've been there already.

In my opinion anything that starts its life with the idea we ADD something ( with the purpose of selling it of course!) to anything in order to create a product that we can sell and we make scientific claims to support its use should:

1) provide a theoretical base which constitutes the base of their invention

2) provide sufficient tests conducted ideally by an independent institute of learning.

Anyway, Mr. Neff will test this, I hope that the tests will be conducted under the minimum requirements for a blind experiment. Should he want to do this correctly Ms. Hakukani is an expert in scientific testing and can approve the methodology from the height of her scientific experience.

This gizmo appears to be simply a pice of black adhesive plastic silicone.

It isn't at all clear to me whether this has any special shape other than being a disk of self adhesive material of a certain thickness. At best it has the same circular pattern used by adhesive bumper disks commonly for sale everywhere for peanuts and that you put under certain surfaces to prevent things scratching a table.

Correct me please if I am wrong but why should I spend $20 for this so called product of their own when identical things (in all colors and shapes) cost way less?

could anyone explain why they should cost 20 times as much as these

The only explanation might be that the bumpers sold by reed booster are the fruit of incredible research ( which would then have been made and could be provided? Right?)

The research needed to back up this claim? That it trancforms a reed you would normally throw out into an object of the JET-AGE (whatever that is!)

From this video (aside from the same pseudo science used to explain a principle that they don't understand) I don't see or understand anything other than they took one adhesive bumper, as shown above, and tried their luck at selling it at way inflated price, making claims that aren't backed by anything than words. Those are not tests they are jokes.

 

selective reading (or, as I suspect, no reading at all)

this is what I wrote

But that doesn't mean that this " thing" won't do anything. It will most certainly do something, somewhere, somehow.
Putting something on your reed will certainly make a difference, as much as take something off your reed ( remember people drilling holes or placing grooves in a reed?) the question is will it improve and more importantly, why?

If you add or remove material from the reed especially in the inside of the chamber there will certainly be an effect. Whether it would be a positive one is a different matter.

This is nothing else, as 1stsaxman wrote, than a baffle and as such it will modestly brighten the sound while dampening the reed.

The most important of the questions are, is this an improvement?

The second consideration is, even if this were an improvement why buying something at that price while you can buy the same thing for almost no money?

Silicone Bumpers cost almost nothing and come in all shapes and sizes.

 

Reed booga.
Ive got a nose full of them.

 

Reed booga.

Best comment yet.

The beauty of this is that boogers are free, readily available, self-adhering and easily removable. In addition they provide a nutritious after-gig snack should you feel a bit peckish. After all, as children many said it's candy.

 

as for their customers, there is one born every day!

 

Please try this experiment with blu-tack and report back with your results. You can try various size blu-tack buttons, but make sure they are relatively small. Try it on some soft buzzy reeds you might otherwise discard.
My experiment was surprisingly positive/good!

 

My experiment was surprisingly positive/good!

Set your expectations sufficiently low, and you'll never be disappointed.

 

They talk about 'air flow' in the aerodynamic sense; it doesn't happen in a sax or mouthpiece and that little rounded thing will not create a low-pressure area in the mouthpiece. All they are doing is adding a baffle but on the reed instead of the mouthpiece. Because a resilient object is stuck to the reed, it will tend to dampen the reed. I do not need to try this or the 'nodal stones' either.

 

So much for sanding the table of the reed to make it flat, due to swelling.

This gizmo intends to exacerbate it... unbelievable.

 

No - sanding the table of the reed to get it flat is so that it seals well with the table of the mouthpiece. This gizmo attaches to the back of the reed closer to the tip of the mouthpiece, so it is in the window area of the mouthpiece, not against the table which would obviously make the setup 100% unplayable.

I talked to Dave Kessler about it Monday (had a layover in Vegas), telling him I was surprised it worked, and he thought it might be because it makes for a smoother transition into the chamber. At any rate he was polite about it. Anyway, who knows why it's doing what it's doing, but it is definitely doing something not insignificant (at least for me, ymmv). It's really strange to hear all these people who have not tried it

A) explain with certainty that it cannot possibly work (while the physics involved in saxophoning are extremely complex and yet to be fully understood, AFAIK)

and

B) completely disregard the fact that in this thread, the only people who have tried it are saying it definitely works for them.

I agree that the price is ridiculous. You are of course free to be skeptical, and nobody is obligated to try any equipment, but it's a weird to dynamic that comes across as...obstinate, let's say.

 

Experimenting with the blu-tack, I found the upper register was greatly improved on a soft reed.

To all the doubters ............ Most of the legendary giants of jazz saxophone have experimented with unorthodox techniques/equipment......that is fact..

 

Experimenting with the blu-tack, I found altissimo was greatly improved on a soft reed.

To all the doubters ............ Most of the legendary giants of jazz saxophone have experimented with unorthodox techniques......that is fact..

Many of them used drugs too, but that doesn't make it a credible endorsement.

 

I hear that there is a very nice bridge for sale in Brooklyn ......

 

@milandro Yeah, I will have a look in my local hardware store or online. Will you be trying this out? You can shape blu-tack to various dimensions and sticks to a DRY reed quite well. Altering the position along the 'heart' area, also changes response/tone.

 

I do own some of these bumpers in the right size already and I can try easily try them, however , as written above, the chance that this has a positive effect is next to none.

It will have an effect nonetheless., most probably a negative one. I don't need to brighten my sound and add dead mass to my reed.

Should anyone think they want to try this kind of thing and spend money for not much in return, there is also another product on the market which was meant to add a " baffle" inside the mouthpiece

The main problem with any added gizmo is that those who seek to sell them (it is always selling) always come up with the gizmo first (in this case it is obvious that it was a product already on the market) rather than having a theory based on some science and then developing and VERIFYING the theory.

 

As I said earlier, I wouldn't doubt it could do something to the sound. I'm not inclined to try it though because I don't want to mess around adding things to my reeds. The reeds are already somewhat variable and inconsistent as any player knows, so why add another variable?

It kind of makes sense that this thing could act as a baffle. I don't know if that's the case, but if so and if you want a brighter sound, why not get a different mpc? Again, so you don't have to stick something (that costs money) on each and every reed you use.

 

It kind of makes sense that this thing could act as a baffle.

I think you are right there as it will (1) obviously make the volume smaller, as does a baffle. But the fact that it is stuck to the vibrating end of the reed will (2) very possibly/probably have some other effect. But either way, I don't think it can be related to Benouli.