Bassoon Reed Measurements

Here are a few bassoon reed measurements that I use to guide me when making my bassoon reeds and reeds for customers. It’s no big secret as I have found these are pretty common among many bassoonists. Most of these measurements are informed by my instructors’ teachings and a bit of my own research, finding the most common bassoon reed measurements across modern reeds in the WWW Bassoon Reed Project

Preferred Reed Shapes, Gouge, and Reed Strength

• Preferred Bassoon Reed Shape: Blain Shape and Herzberg “Original”
  I prefer a reed shape with around a 15mm tip width for my reeds and relatively wide throat and tube

• Preferred Gouge: Standard 1.35mm / -0.10 Standard Eccentric Gouge Bassoon Cane

• Preferred Reed Strength: Medium strength and high density cane

• Still looking for a recommendation?
  My go to reeds are the Blain or Herzberg “Original” Medium Strength Custom Professional Bassoon Reeds

Reed Measurements
You can get some practice by working on your own reed blanks!

• Overall Reed Length: 55mm

• Tube Length: 28mm

• Blade Length: 27mm

• 1st wire: 2mm from collar to the center of the wire

• 2nd wire: 9mm from collar to the center of the wire

• 3rd wire: 5mm from the end of the tube to center of the wire

• Critical Point

• Extreme tip: 0.015-0.020mm in thickness, depending on hardness of the cane.
  From 1mm to the extreme tip of the reed, this is a chisel-like tip carved with a razor blade directly after clipping the blank. I then lightly clean this up across the tip using 1200 grit sand paper and blend into the blade.

• Critical Point: 8mm from the tip of the blade
  This is usually anywhere between 0.65-0.72mm in thickness depending on cane hardness, you can basically blend out from this point and get a reed that works very well

A Few Adjustments

Nothing can substitute good cane!

Since you made it this far… The only true statement I think all reed players can agree on is nothing can substitute good reed cane. Luckily for us there is a lot of great cane and it is relatively inexpensive- it’s unfortunately an invasive species across most of the Western Hemisphere! The reason why reeds are cost what they do is because of the labor and time it takes to go from a grass growing in Southern France to something that a conductor will deem acceptable in the concert hall.

• If you have just started adjusting your reeds a few tools you should have on hand are:

  • General tools like: a nice set of 5-Inches Needle nose pliers Wire Cutter Pliers, a small ruler with mm or 1/16” increments, a pencil

  • Bassoon Reed Specific Tools including: a reed plaque, cutting block (billet), holding mandrel, and reed knife

  • Swiss triangle file, I recommend Nicholson or Grobet

  • I also really like to have 500 grit and 1200 grit wet/dry sandpaper on hand

• Your first adjustment can always be the wires as the adjustment is reversable

  • Be sure to only adjust the wires with the reed on the holding or forming mandrel