I have an Emerald reed and personally don't like it. I can't remember why, though, I still use it sometimes but I'm trying to clean out some older reeds first.
cool. i ordered some handmade ones of the internet. They are the black edmund nielson woodwind reeds. they got good reviews and weren't too expensive.
i went through all my reeds today... they are all dead... except for two which are very hard to control. they will make good practicing reeds, so i can practice good tone and control and stuff, just not acceptable for using at school(i dont want to hurt anyones ears:D) and definetly not for performing.
Hmm, I don't see why you wouldn't like Emerald reeds... before I could make reeds I always used them and they worked well enough. I mean, not as good as a homemade, but for a store bought, yeah. I got fourth chair symphonic band in the State competition this year, the guy in third chair used Eerald. You can get pretty far with them.
With the shortage of oboe reeds on the market today we can no longer afford to be picky. I have found that Emerald, Lesher, Selmer etc are all decent reeds. You may have to buy 2 or 3 to find the best one for you because no 2 reeds are identical. In any event, it is difficult to even get reeds these days. We should be grateful for anyone even making reeds right now.
If your oboe teacher knows how to "alter" your store-bought reeds, then hopefully he/she actually knows how to make them as well. If this is the case, you would be much better off having hand-made reeds, as adjusting between store bought and hand made, or even store bought and hand-adjusted isn't the best thing for you to be getting used to.
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