BG France A80L-3 Reed Performer

I play tenor sax. The set up that works best for me on my Yamaha TS 280 is Theo Wanne Gaia 1 6* mouthpiece with Silverstein Quattro Lig and SIlverstein Ambipoly Jazz 2 reeds. Usually I’m very happy with that. But every once in a while the sound doesn’t come out as it should and I find myself fiddling about with different mouthpieces, ligs and reeds. So there is a certain attraction in spending €5.50 on something that might make a difference. My experience with the reed performers has not been particularly positive - sometimes it feels as if they make an improvement sometimes not.

Now obviously €5.50 for 3 very small pieces of some kind of sticky tape is mad money - but hey - €5.50 is not so much for a one off purchase - and more’s the point - it’s effectively free if your Thomann order is just below the free delivery threshold. It’s also worth saying that it would difficult enough to make a homemade version by cutting a piece of sticky tape to size and then fixing it to the reed.

Yesterday I had one of those moments when the right sound just wouldn’t come out and the reed just wouldn’t stay in place on a different ligature (a GF). So I tried on one of these - the reed stayed in place and I was blown away by the strength and richness of the sound. I think that, for whatever reason, the topside of the synthetic reed was slippery under the GF lig and the extra bit of thickness and grip that the patch provided made a big difference. Today the difference was less marked - but it’s so hard to compare how you sound today with how you sounded yesterday.

Anyway I didn’t want to take the patch off for the sake of trying comparisons. Which brings me to the reason I can only give these patches 3 out of 5 for quality - they are not really very reusable (although the manufacture claims they are) - if you take them off they crinkle and the edges loose their stickiness. So all in all I don’t know how recommendable they are.