Alle Marken auf einer Skala, Blatt für Blatt gemessen.
From a single reed on our measuring station to one scale for every brand. Here is every step, including every adjustment we make to the numbers, and why.
The charts in this section use example data. They are labelled with real brands and reeds so each step is easier to follow, but every number in them is invented to show what the step does: they say nothing about how these reeds really measure. That is what the chart above shows. The method is exactly the one behind it.
Reedfinder measures every single reed itself, with the same procedure for every brand. All measurements are made under constant conditions: the same temperature and the same humidity.
Each measurement gives a raw reading: one number for how stiff the reed is. The higher the number, the harder the reed. The only thing we take from the manufacturer is the strength printed on the box.
Before any reading enters the chart, it passes an automatic plausibility check. For each strength we determine the median reading and a robust measure of spread, one that a single extreme value cannot distort. A reading more than four times that spread from the median is classified as invalid and excluded. Every other reading is kept.
A "3.5" means something different at every brand, so printed strengths cannot be compared across brands directly. Within one reed line, however, they are consistent: how much harder a line's 3.5 measures than its own 3.0 tells us what half a strength is worth in readings.
So we centre every line on its own average and fit one common step size through all lines together.
The common step is the unit of the scale, nothing more. It does not make every brand's strengths evenly spaced: each strength stays exactly where its own reeds measure. A line whose steps are smaller or larger than usual keeps its narrower or wider gaps on the chart.
To line the brands up, each reed line is summarised by one number: where it sits, meaning how hard its strengths measure on average for their printed labels.
Something has to define what "3.0" means on the shared scale, and we do not let any single manufacturer do it. We take how a printed 3.0 of every line measures, average the lines of each brand first, then average the brands, every brand counting once however many lines it makes. That average brand is what 3.0 means on the chart, and every other strength follows from the common step.
Every reading is now converted with the same formula. It is one straight-line conversion for every reed, so nothing is reordered and the distances between reeds are kept. The readings are simply expressed in strength units.
That is where the chart's message comes from: a line that measures harder than its label moves to the right of its printed strength, a softer one to the left.
The chart also listens to players. When a player gives 4 or 5 stars to reeds from two different lines, or tells us both felt "just right", those reeds probably feel alike to them, so we move the two a little closer together. And when a reed felt too hard while a reed from another line felt right, the first must play harder than the second: if the chart says otherwise, we move the two lines apart until it agrees.
We never edit an individual measurement, and never use a manufacturer's figures except the printed strength that labels each reed.
Reedfinder sells some of the brands on this chart. The measurement and the scale are exactly the same for every brand, whether we sell it or not.
Everything on the strength chart is one of these few elements.
Compare reeds within one instrument, tuning and cut. Each has its own scale, so strengths of different cuts or tunings are not comparable on the chart.
