Philly Style EH Horn Reeds.

Wednesday August 01 2007

On the oboe Bboard, a regular reader asked:

I just made my first two English Horn Reeds—Basically, I followed the instructions in the Weber/Capps manual/video. Their advice is to use the same basic Philly structure as for oboe reeds, but with the narrow waist of the hourglass closer to the base of the reed (thread/wire) and with less exaggerated transitions to the heart and less thinning of the tip, in other words a much more uniform scrape but still Philly style. At the same time, I bought 4 reeds from 2 makers—one of them i would say makes a V-shaped tip and the rest of the reed is scraped uniformly but still fairly opaque to the back light, but with a slightly visible spine—but no heart to speak of. The other is the same but it looks like some attempt is made to scrape barely discernible windows into the otherwise uniform back in the same place you would normally find windows on an oboe reed. I’ve concluded that EH reeds are MUCH… more forgiving than oboe reeds..you can get a decent sound just by thinning the back and putting a tip on the thing, not nearly as much futzing—beyond that I’m sure there are many nuances.

But my question is—.is there really such a thing as a Philly style EH reed with deep windows and a protruding heart? And what do the really good EH players do?

I responded with this:

Well, have been looking for my “reed reference storage case” for the last several days and have come up short. But let me state what I do remember.

Mr. Weber made a special EH reed for me (he doesn’t sell ones he makes, but made it for me to reference from). Just as his book states, it looks exactly like one of his oboe reeds, but on a bigger scale. No, he doesn’t take as much out of the back, (the thickest place in the heart on his oboe reeds is probably around .45, while the thinnest place in the windows of his oboe reeds is around .29), the difference is quite noticeable, and does produce the regular curvy side profile that is displayed in his book to describe oboe reeds. So in this regard, I suppose it would still be considered a “Philly style” EH reed.

After searching in all of my reeds, I finally found the one I was looking for.

The reed on the right is one I scraped. The reed on the left is from Mr. Weber.

Final Note: Measuring the thickness of Mr. Weber’s reed, the thickest place of the spine (the back of the heart) measures at .52. The thickest place of the heart which is half-way between the spine and the rail on all sides measures .47. The thinnest place of the windows (right behind the heart) measures .31. So I guess he does take just as much out of the back! But leaves more on the spine/heart. I know that if he was using a wider shape, he most certainly wouldn’t be able to take that much out, but he uses a narrower shape, which is a copy of Rosenblatt’s. Mr. Weber further stated that Carlos Coehlo’s shaper tip is also a copy of Rosenblatt’s but a bit narrower.

I’m going to copy Mr. Weber’s Rosenblatt tip in about a month. He’s going to teach me how to make shaper tips. Anyone interested in buying one?