Aurora Winds

My very old website has just had a much-needed refresh. I have also added density-tested reed blanks as an option to the other reed blanks I offer. Check it out!

https://www.aurora-winds.com/
http://wix.to/boAIcTT

Aurora Winds | Clarinet Reed Blanks Finest quality clarinet reed blanks, made from the highest quality cane | Aurora Winds

This is the last type of cane I will be talking about for some time. I had been ordering Danzi cane and selling blanks made from it for many years, but now it does not appear to be available anymore from Danzi reeds. If you can find it again, it might be worth trying especially if you prefer to play on thicker blanks and reeds. Otherwise, I find it can make some very resistant reeds because it is usually very dense and medium-hard to hard. But, it can make some lovely reeds.

I found this cane to have similar qualities to Donati cane. So, if you're trying to make reeds that are resistant to very resistant, you might want to give Marca a try. It didn't seem to matter what shape or style I made; they tended to be resistant, although not as resistant as the Donati reeds I made.

I'm going to start this review by saying that I play on a very close-facing mouthpiece. It requires more resistant reeds. If I had to approximate what strength I would be using if I were buying commercial ones, they would probably be 3.75-4.25 reeds. Not the most resistant possible, but resistant in general. They of course, feel easy to play on when I play on this mouthpiece.

I think Donati cane is wonderful, but it consistently created reeds that are far too resistant to work on any of the mouthpieces I tested them on, including the one with a .96 mm tip opening! I would approximate many of these reeds to be a 4.5 to 5.5 (!) reed strength. However, the ones that were not as resistant were absolutely amazing reeds and I used them to perform on multiple occasions.

If you're looking for cane that could create some more resistant reeds, this might be the one for you.

I'm going to finish up my cane reviews from my long project that will hopefully finish sometime in early 2024. I started my project testing multiple varieties of cane by making 100 Vandoren V12-style reeds. But, I have extended and completed the testing on 100 Vandoren Traditional-style reeds, and 100 Vandoren 56 rue Lepic-style reeds. This was to see which types of tube cane could work the best for each style and on different mouthpieces.

One of the canes that worked well for all reed types and mouthpieces tested is Marion cane. It is an independent brand, but Rigotti is the seller and distributor. In my testing, I was able to get very good reeds for all of my 6 mouthpieces and with the 3 different types of reeds I have been making.

I have also personally been performing on reeds made with this cane for the past ten years and I have never had a bad batch of this cane. This is one of the reasons I have been selling Marion blanks for many years. It even makes good soprano saxophone (!!) reeds that I performed on recently.

If you haven't tried this cane before, I strongly recommend trying it.

More cane!

I have been selling blanks made from Vic cane for a while now and I had always thought that the cane seemed to be dense and very hard. After testing it, it definitely is. It does not seem that it would work very well at all for thinner blanks, or for more open facing mouthpieces. I could not get it to work at all for a Vandoren B40 Lyre mouthpiece.

I have yet to test this cane on a large number of thicker blanks, such as a Vandoren 56 rue Lepic-style reeds, but I think it would really suit that reed style.

The other thing that is good about this cane is that because the tubes are very straight, and very thick walled, not much needs to be thrown away immediately.

Most of the cane varieties that I have tested, continue to test, and use have been grown in the Var region of France. However Argendonax cane is grown by the Gonzalez family in Argentina. Argendonax is the American distributor of Gonzalez tube cane.

I'm not sure if you can get clarinet tube cane directly from Gonzalez, or if you need to go through Argendonax, but this is how I got this batch of cane in 2016.

I think this cane is great, I just have not been able to get it to work for myself on the mouthpiece that I prefer to use. It did seem to work the best with mouthpieces that have close to medium close facings so I recommend experimenting with it.

Another review for today. I worked with my iNNOLEDY cane in this project as well. Unfortunately, I was not able to get any of these reeds to work for any of my mouthpieces. A lot of the tubes were not thick enough to make blanks, and even after that I couldn't get 10 finished reeds on my first attempt. (I did make 3 others after completing 10 each of the other types.) That's just not a good sign.

So far for this project, I have been making Vandoren V12 and Vandoren Traditional style reeds. I have yet to try this cane on the Vandoren 56 rue Lepic style reeds, but given the difficulty in finding tubes thick enough for the others, I'm guessing that might not work either. I don't see myself buying more of this type of cane.

It's time to get back to some cane reviews. I took a break on posting these because I also started a project with the same cane varieties to test on Vandoren Traditional style reeds as well (previously the test test was only for Vandoren V12 style) to see if anything changed.

I wasn't sure what to make of the Rouche - "Helena" cane at first. I ordered 1 kilogram, but immediately had to throw away 40% of it because the tubes were not thick enough. The cane also has a slightly greenish tinge to it which could indicate that it wasn't cured enough after harvesting.

I assumed that none of the reeds made from it would be good, but I was very wrong.

Most of the reeds worked best with my mouthpieces that have more open facings which are the Vandoren B40 Lyre and Vandoren BD 5. I was also able to use 1 of the reeds to perform on some outdoor concerts over the summer and in very humid indoor conditions.

Having so much waste and the possibility that the cane is not aged properly concerns me. I don't feel that it is something that I can use for myself. But, perhaps other batches from other years could be better. I'm not going to throw away the remainder of what I have though, maybe I will try it again after it sits for a while.

Hopefully this has been helpful!

Hear my reeds in action on Peacherine's latest album, also available for streaming! I was very excited to be a part of this project.

I’m closer to completing another project, and that is making soprano sax reeds for myself. There don’t seem to be a lot of resources out there that tell you what the proper measurements are. I’ve just been measuring the reeds I already have (Vandoren Traditional) and using my Uhl profiler. I’m still experimenting with the ideal blank thickness and tip thickness, but what I’ve gotten so far appears to work really well.

I may need to experiment with several tube cane diameters, but clarinet cane appears to work well.

I’m hoping I can get these reeds figured out before the Saxophone Symposium in January so I can play on them!

I have another cane review for today. I finally got a chance to work with Glotin tube cane. I was able to purchase this batch from iNNOLEDY and it was so easy to work with. I absolutely HATE planing cane and working with Glotin was actually fun because it was so easy.

I was worried that because the cane felt so soft that the reeds would be unusable, but I was wrong. When measured the cane is very soft, but it is also very dense which appears to be a good combination. Although there were reeds that worked on all my mouthpieces, it worked extremely well with my Vandoren BD 5 and Vandoren B40 Lyre.

Most of the tubes were thick enough to be used and I didn't immediately need to through any pieces away for that reason. I'm hoping to obtain this cane directly from Glotin so that I can offer it in the future.

Filling in this week and really putting these reeds to the test with Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. Previous to this experiment, I didn’t realize how consistent my personal preferences were. I organized all my playing reeds by how they responded and you can see how close together some of those measurements are.

For my second cane review I thought it would be helpful to discuss a very popular and commonly used brand of clarinet cane. This is, of course, Rigotti.

I have been very happy with the Rigotti cane that I've been working with for my blanks. Since it's one of the most popular choices and many of my clients prefer Rigotti blanks, I buy larger amounts of it directly from Rigotti. I will typically order 2-4 kilos at once.

The tubes that they send are very consistent. I can trust them to send me straight and symmetrical tubes that are thick-walled and have been aged very well. I usually don't have to throw very many whole tubes away.

This cane is not my personal favorite, but I have performed many times on reeds that I've made from Rigotti cane.

For this project, it was very easy to find and make enough reeds to compare with the other cane varieties. I was able to get many of the finished reeds to work immediately for each of the six mouthpieces I tested them on.

I've also been testing all of the pieces of cane and reeds for this project and Rigotti appears to be of medium-hard density and hardness. I think this may explain why it can work for so many different set-ups.

The company also offers different sizes of saxophone cane which I have previously worked with; it also has the same qualities as the clarinet cane.

In general, Rigotti is excellent and consistent cane.

I've never tried Côte d'Azur tube cane before my current project. I've also never heard of a clarinetist using this cane before, although I have seen it available from several double reed suppliers. I have tried to find information about its origins, but I have not been able to find much.

I started with 1 pound of cane that I got from iNNOLEDY. My impressions of this cane is not a reflection of this company, I am glad they are offering so many options. But, from this 1 pound of cane, I immediately had to throw out about 9 ounces of it since the tube walls were not thick enough. This left me with only 42% to work with.

However, this did leave some very good tubes to work with. I did try to complete 10 finished reeds for this project, but sadly, I was only able to make 6 finished reeds. I usually work with tubes with walls that are at least 3.5 mm thick, but I think I did try some that were only 3.3 mm thick. This resulted in some blanks that were impossible to make completely flat and you can see this in one of the photos.

I have not tried this cane for thinner clarinet blanks, like what would be used to replicate Vandoren Traditional-style reeds. Perhaps this cane would work better for that, and if it does, I will share the results of that.

The 6 reeds that I did get from this cane are very good quality and I was able to get at least one to work with each mouthpiece I tried them on. For reference, the mouthpieces I have been using for these tests are Fobes 10K, Fobes CWF, Vandoren M13, Vandoren M13 Lyre, Vandoren BD5, and Vandoren B40 Lyre.

For me, this tube cane is not cost-effective for my personal playing. But, it may work better for thinner-style blanks. I'm really hoping that it does work better for this, because the finished reeds that come out of this cane are great!

I hope this information is helpful. Please let me know if you have any thoughts to share about this review.

I have been very busy this past month working on a several projects. One is to provide comprehensive reviews of the different types of tube cane that I have been working with and also types that I may decide to offer in the future.

The second project is the development of a method in which I would be able to offer custom finished reeds.

I decided to start with making 10 reeds for each type of cane that I have. I have 11 types of cane, so this took a very long time. I was not able to make 10 finished reeds on one type (more on this later), so in the end, I made 106 finished reeds.

I attempted to make all of the finished reeds in the same way and as close to the same measurements that I was able. For this project, all reeds were made with my Reeds n' Stuff shaping machine and AW Tools RPM 68 profiler with the Vandoren V-12 guide.

I also measured all 106 reeds for hardness, flexion, and density. Then, I play-tested ALL of the reeds on 6 different mouthpieces. This has been an interesting project and there will be much more information to follow!

In July I joined the Denver Philharmonic to perform with the Bayerische Philharmonie Choir in a concert at Herkulessaal in Munich.

I had never been to or performed in Germany before and I'm happy to say that my reeds held up very well. There is quite a difference in climate between Baltimore and Bavaria, but since my reeds are stable I didn't have any problems adjusting.

I don't know if I'll ever get to perform in this hall again, but I certainly hope so, it was a fantastic space!