We talk a lot about reeds needing to be changed regularly when they’re being played. What we don’t usually think about, however, if whether you can keep a reed indefinitely if you’re not using it. Do reeds go out of date or not and does it depend on the conditions they’re kept in? I was curious so had a look into it and I’ve written up what I found here.
In general, it’s actually the case that if a reed has been kept under the correct conditions, it can actually improve with age, due to the aging of the cane. This relies on the reeds being unplayed and preferably in sealed packaging. It’s even better if the humidity and temperature have been controlled.
Reeds are pretty temperamental at the best of times, so you might think that if you’ve had them a really long time, they won’t play at all. In fact, that depends a lot on how they’ve been stored. If you’ve got reeds that you’ve played once or twice and then put in the bottom of your case for years, that’s very different to never opening a box of reeds, keeping them in a temperature controlled environment and coming to use them fully sealed a few years down the line.
I’ll talk about the different conditions the reeds might have been stored in and how this affects their aging. I’ll discuss things like whether the reeds are used, whether they have been in a sealed package, whether they have been in a humid environment etc. All of these things will have an impact on the quality of the reed.
Do reeds age with time?
An interesting point to consider is that everything ages with time. If you think about cooking, for example, you can cook something quicker by turning up the temperature. This is a form of aging – it will get burnt faster if it’s at a higher temperature. Everything, therefore, is being aged with temperature all the time, just very slowly.
Using this analogy, we can conclude that reeds definitely do age with time. However, not all things deteriorate with age. A good example of this is wine – we know that most wines improve with age and are actually more expensive the longer they have been aged. So we need to work out which category a reed falls into – does it get worse or better with age?
Do unused reeds get better with age?
In reality, there hasn’t been a lot of research into whether or not reeds actually get better with age. However, there are a lot of cases of people finding old boxes of reeds they’d forgotten about and claiming that they play far better than new ones that they have bought. These tend to be unused, box reeds that have been kept in one place for a long time. They will likely have experienced some temperature and humidity variation due to the weather, but this will not have been extreme, assuming the box has been kept indoors.
Cane itself will certainly develop with age. If the cane used is particularly young, it may benefit significantly from being aged as it will “ripen” and become firmer. However, it’s debated whether the cane will keep increasing in quality the older it gets or whether it will reach a point where it begins to deteriorate. The more common opinion is that unplayed reeds will continue to improve with age, but some believe that there is a point where the reed fibres begin to decay and the reeds begin to soften.
Whatever you believe, it’s widely accepted that there is a significant difference between reeds that are new and reeds that are a few years old. It’s worth noting, however, that there are some people that believe the quality of the cane used to make reeds was simply better in the past. This is certainly a possibility, but it’s impossible to prove. We can be sure that cane will change with time so it seems like this is the more likely reason for old reeds playing differently to new reeds.
Do used reeds get better with age?
If unused reeds get better with age, due to the cane aging, is the same true of used reeds? It seems like the effect that happens to the cane should be the same, irrespective of whether the reed has been played or not. However, there could be other things that come into play when the reed has been used.
Some of the things that have an effect on whether or not the reed gets better with age are:
- Where you stored the reed after playing it
- Whether the reed was dried out after playing
- How much the reed was played
When you play a reed, you naturally transfer bacteria onto it. If you carefully clean the reed after playing it, you may be able to remove a lot of this bacteria, but it’s unlikely you will remove all of it. If you’ve only played the reed once or twice and the bacteria content is small, it will likely just die off if you leave the reed in a suitable environment where it won’t harbour more bacteria. It’s worth noting that brushing your teeth before playing can minimise the amount of bacteria transferred to the reed.
Something that will have possibly the biggest impact on how well the reed ages after being used is whether it is fully dried out when stored. If you take it straight off the mouthpiece and put it into a case without drying it out, you’ll have a lot of moisture in the case with the reed. This could cause warping or even mould on the reed, which will make the reed age more prematurely.
If you play the reed once or twice, then dry it and put it into a humidity controlled case, it’s likely that it will age just as an unused reed will age. However, if the reed has been played quite a lot before being put into the case, even if it’s been well looked after, it’s likely that quite a bit a bacteria could get in, or the reed could already have begun to wear out.
Can you extend a reed’s lifetime?
There are a few things you can do to extend the lifetime of a reed. Probably the most important thing is to dry out the reed after playing it. This needs to be done carefully – you can get the excess moisture off with your fingers and then leave it out of the case for a while with the part that you put in your mouth not touching any surfaces.
Next, you can get a humidity controlled case. This helps keep the reed under consistent conditions and keeps moisture out. Cycling through a range of different reeds is also a good tactic – this allows you to keep reeds you particularly like working for longer and you can have different reeds for different situations.
Summary
To sum up this article, it seems to be the case that reeds actually get better rather than worst with time. The cane the reeds are made from benefits from being allowed to age. However, you need to take care of the reeds well to stop moisture and bacteria affecting them. This is particularly difficult if the reeds have been taken out of their packaging or played, as this gives opportunities for the reed to harbour bacteria.