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weighting to shorten reed length for a given pitch


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The lowest reeds on my 6.25" Jeff duet appear shorter and have heavily soldered upper thirds compared to the same notes on my Wheatstone (also Jeff duet but with radial reed pan) at 8,50".  Was this a technique used to make best use of available space?  If so, could a reed be shorter but wider and not suffer?  The rest of the reeds on both instruments are clean. 

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It is a way to fit more reeds into limited space. Short, heavily weighted bass reeds tend to be slower starting, less pitch stable, with a smaller dynamic range. I don't think making a short reed wider would help much; you'd still have to weight it down to the desired pitch.

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3 hours ago, alex_holden said:

It is a way to fit more reeds into limited space. Short, heavily weighted bass reeds tend to be slower starting, less pitch stable, with a smaller dynamic range. I don't think making a short reed wider would help much; you'd still have to weight it down to the desired pitch.

 

Thank you Alex.  One further question along these lines;  Is the rounded end of the reed shoe modifiable to any extent?

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6 hours ago, alex_holden said:

Short, heavily weighted bass reeds tend to be slower starting, less pitch stable, with a smaller dynamic range

 

Far be it for me to question this statement; I just want to add from my personal experience (with "soldering" steel reeds) that the added low F of my ET ECs (which had been an Ab reed before) does not appear to be worse in any regard than the G on the other side; the same is true for the low B of the TT, which has been weighted even a little more (had been a D# reed otherwise).

 

Best wishes  -?

 

Edited by Wolf Molkentin
corrected
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3 hours ago, Wolf Molkentin said:

 

Far be it for me to question this statement; I just want to add from my personal experience (with "soldering" steel reeds) that the added low F of my ET ECs (which had been an Ab reed before) does not appear to be worse in any regard than the G on the other side; the same is true for the low B of the TT, which has been weighted even a little more (had been a D# reed otherwise).

 

Best wishes  -?

 

 

Mine are steel also and sound just fine.  in case anyone is curious and because this might apply to other situations, here's where this is going:

 

I have one box in old pitch (somewhere around C#) and another in modern pitch which is large but has B flat and B in place of the usual low G and usual f# thumb key which is located far upper left.   It also has routed but empty chambers  for three more base pairs.  These lie convenient to the action board locations for the required buttons pads and levers which are absent.  Because I mostly play for dances with piano, neither of these is ideal.  While wallowing in my frustration, I realized that were I to raise the pitch of the smaller box to D (centered) rather than lower it to C (modern) the common dance tunes in G,D,and A (F,C and G fingerings)would be easier than with a C centered instrument.  The only downside would be loss of a low (new) G.  So, move the thumb key f# to match the larger box and make the thumb key low G.  Re-arrange the bass on the large box and fill in the blanks;  Voila!  Best of all possible worlds....?

I saw recently in an older post that NicK Robertshaw tuned one of his Jeff duets this way.

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