Légère Reeds - Bassoon Reed, Strength Medium (DRBM) - Premium Synthetic Woodwind Reed

"Back in the day" of list serves, there was one bassoon professor who was offering a cash reward for someone to create a decent synthetic reed. I'm not sure if this would win the prize, but it has been an important addition to my reed case.For years the clarinet player next to me played on a plastic reed. She told me that it was a consistent B+. As a mom and a judge, she didn't have time to practice, raise kids, work in court, and fuss with finding the one A+ reed in a box. I only wished there were as good of a synthetic bassoon reed.I stopped playing for several years, so didn't notice when these Legere reeds showed up. I would give it a C - not yet concert-ready. A 220's crack, the E-flat below it are unstable, and pianissimo attacks in the basement are iffy - BUT, that all has actually been an asset for my work to regain my chops. It's like running with ankle weights. I will continue to use this as my practice reed between concerts. I can get a respectable tone, and I have to really listen to my practicing to stay in tune and to have clean attacks and slurs. I don't waste precious practice time fussing with reeds, and when I do pull them out of the box, my playing is getting all that closer to being ready for prime time.This is a high price, but I would love to see beginners working with these until they are ready to begin making their own cane reeds.

This is good to have in my reed case for practicing or emergencies. It is nice to know that I always have something usable if reed-making isn't going well. The only flaw with this one is that I struggle with high notes. They crack easily and I have to put in a lot of effort to get them to speak. Lower and middle register sound great, surprising reedy! Forget about pianissimo in the low register though. Not a second bassoon reed. For a plastic reed, I was very impressed and would buy again. This would be PERFECT for a high school student who doesn't want to struggle with the inconsistencies of buying commercial reeds.

I seem to have dry mouth and having a reed which doesn't depend upon having the reed being very wet is a great plus. And apparently these reed last a long time, but I haven't had this one more than a couple of weeks, so I cannot comment on this.

I was pretty hesitant to buy this, as it's a lot of money to sink on something that may or may not work. I also had no idea if I needed the medium or the medium hard. I went with the medium, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised! It worked as well as my best cane reed, right out of the box! It responded well in every register, and I didn't have any attack issues while playing through some scales in all the registers. We'll see how it lasts throughout an actual practice session and performance, but my immediate impressions are that this is way better than I expected it to be! I'm a lapsed player who majored in bassoon in college and played professionally for a short bit ~15 years ago, but I never bought my own profiler or shaper, so I ran out of playable reeds pretty quickly, and buying them and adjusting was expensive, too, so anything that gets me back into playing is worth the money for me.

The tip is open too wide and there is no way to adjust it and it makes it so unless you play loud it's not responsive like a natural bassoon reed... but it is good to just practice with

Money well spent!! My high school student has been very pleased. She’s been playing for 5yrs and has tried a variety of brands. This is by far her favorite!

It has started to split down the middle after using it 6 times. It’s on the quiet sounding side. It’s loose on my bocal.

My son was going thru 1-2 bassoon reeds per month until it was suggested we try a Legere reed. It is a hefty price but the reeds last for a very long time and sound wonderful.

If you want medium (as labelled) then you may wish to try hard. A lot of money to mess around with when you can't try them.

Ich stand Reeds aus Kunststoff sehr kritisch gegenüber, doch dieses Produkt hat mich überzeugt das es tatsächlich spielbare Reeds aus Kunststoff gibt.

L'anche à une très belle sonorité sur le fagott !J'ai dû la renvoyer car elle ne tenait pas sur le bocal, c'est vraiment dommage.Impossible de lui donner de l'ouverture pour le bocal.