Bag pressure

[brendan lewis]

Does anyone have a number to put on average?? bag pressure (I have trouble with bass drone cutting out in the second octave {what??!! - an unheard of problem!!} - which reed is the guilty party). Happy Easter by the way.

Regards to all

bl

[Joseph E. Smith]

It is quite possible that the bass drone reed needs to have it's tongue flicked open once or twice, but be careful not to overdo it as it will take a bit of effort to get it back into tune. That, or adjust the bridle back to open it up a bit more. Is it a cane or synthetic (brass & styrene) reed?

[Pat Cannady]

Check for leaks. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with your reeds at all, but a slight leak can render your instrument unplayable.

[djm]

Pressure is about 2.5 - 3 psi. As well as flicking the tongue a couple of times, there are other adjustments that can be made to the drones like shifting the bridle down (lenghening the tongue) or adding a small blob of wax to the end of the tongue to give it more weight for momentum. If you don't already have them, the books by Hegarty or Quinn have lots of useful information on how to adjust your set.

As well as the leaks suggested above, you might also want to check your fingering. A lot of problems can be caused by too loose fingering for the second octave. Your fingering must be very tight, especially in the lower hand, when playing in the second octave. When playing without drones it is easy to get into the bad habit of over-pressuring to sound the notes to compensate for too-loose fingering. It may be a slow, painful process to get rid of this habit, but I would suggest you start there before starting to play aound with the reeds too much.

djm

[brendan lewis]

Thanks for your replies gentlemen - especially djm, the psi gives me an all round number to aim at for total balance and total control .

regards

bl