B♭ Clarinet French Cut

First synthetic reed I've ever preferred over cane

After years of experimenting, I was startled to discover French Cut as my choice on clarinets from Eb soprano through bass clarinet. With other Legere cuts, a 3.25 always feels too soft and a 3.5 too hard. With French Cut, 3.5, and even 3.75 work well with my sopranos. As a bonus, being narrower, a French Cut Bb Legere fits nicely on an Eb soprano. Compared to all other reeds, French Cut is more controllable, and has great tone, response, & dynamics.

Dark tone beauty. Clarinet - French Cut

I used the French Cut on some of my other fine mouthpieces and found that it worked perfectly with some of them. My previous playing has been exclusively with the European Cut, but with a different mouthpiece. This can make the case, for matching a mouthpiece to a reed.

Legere French Cut Clarinet Reed Experience

The Legere French Cut reed is an absolute pleasure to play on my clarinet. I purchased the 2.5 and 2.75 strength. Key points include: - Bright but not too much. So, for me that means it is responsive and easy to control for more classical sound or for change to a little more jazzy popular expressive sound. - Great dynamic range (i.e. very soft to loud) control, and over the clarinet musical range (i.e. from low E below the staff to high G at 2 octaves above the staff) - By the way, I tried and compared a number of Signature cut reeds to the French cut. In my opinion, the French wins all around, hands down. - In the future, I may try a few French Cut for my soprano sax, since I was so pleased with these on my clarinet.