Buying Guide

From the beginning reed-maker to the professional, we have a tailor-made solution for your cane buying needs.

For the Professional Player

If you have a gouger, the obvious choice is to purchase tube cane. If you make a lot of reeds per week and aren’t picky about your cane, tube cane is the most economical choice. The downside is that most tube cane as sorted by the grower has a wide range of diameters. Let’s say your diameter of choice is 10.5 mm. Assuming you are splitting your tubes into 3 sections, on average less than 15% of the sections will be 10.5 mm. A number of the sections will even be out of the original range. This just means you are probably making your reeds with a wide diameter range which makes it difficult to control the opening.

Another approach is to purchase our premium pre-gouged cane. We have done all the sorting for you. You can buy your cane in a specific diameter. Virtually every piece is usable. Less wasted cane, less wasted time and more consistent reedmaking. Our cane is pre-gouged using a Reeds ’n Stuff pre-gouger which produces cane which is approximately .90 mm in the center. This saves wear and tear on your gouger.

Please check out our samplers, an economical way to try several cane varieties.

For the Occasional Reedmaker

If you have a gouger, we recommend buying our premium pre-gouged cane over tube cane. Making the case for pre-gouged cane.

For all Reedmakers

1.  Figure out what diameter works best for you
    
If you don’t already know what diameter you prefer, we can help. As a rule of thumb, the wider the shape, the larger the diameter and vice-versa, a narrow shape works better with a smaller diameter. If you are still not sure, just choose 10.5 mm to start. If your reeds are too open, choose a larger diameter. When trying different diameter cane, make sure you use the same brand of cane for the tests.

2.  Use our samplers to pick your favorite variety.

We have samplers and mini-samplers that will allow you to try several cane brands. Make sure you have already determined the cane diameter that best suites your reedsmaking. The gouge for these samplers is optimized to the diameter. We do offer different gouges. See the next section.

3.  Fine-tune

We offer more than one gouge. Once you have established your diameter and cane variety, you may want to optimize the gouge. You could purchase the Oboe Gouge Sampler. In general, the  the larger the gouger diameter, the thinner the edges, the quicker the reed starts to vibrate when scraped. If you like to take your time making your reeds, the smaller diameter is a better choice. See our guide to gouging under cane processing.

4.  Shaped Cane

If you buy shaped cane, try our premium oboe shape sampler.