ReedWorks: A Guide to Single Reed Adjustment

ReedWorks: A Guide to Single Reed Adjustment by Blake McGee. This book details the steps in single reed adjustments. It has 76 pages that include a series of reed evaluations and adjustment steps and over 160 full color, detailed photographs.

This book is divided into five sections over twelve chapters. The first section covers a systematic process for breaking in a new reed, storage, and regular maintenance. The author often makes the point that by implementing these three elements, most reeds will be greatly improved without further adjustments.

The next two sections cover both basic and advanced testing techniques for assessing various potential problems with a reed. Learning how to reliably identify the underlying characteristics of both good and bad reeds is imperative before making any corrections. The third section covers adjustment techniques once the reed problem has been identified. A tutorial for using adjustment tools is included in Section IV followed by a section explaining of the use of several types of reed micrometers. The final section discusses a method for analyzing the shape of the reed based on data collected from micrometer measurements. By using this method, many reeds that seem otherwise unusable can be corrected.