Ishimori Wood Stone Hand Selected Tenor Sax Reeds - box of 5

Best reeds I use at present

Good reeds. Works fine over the whole range of the sax.

Just bought my third box of tenor reeds. First time went for 2.5 but upped to 3 for second box as 2.5 seemed a little soft. Box was very good so just got another box of 3s but this time they do seem to be harder, more like i would expect from other brands so just wondering whether Ishimori have changed their gradings? I would be interested to hear from other users. Still like the reeds very much but I am having to do a bit more prep work on them than previously

Consistently good reliable reeds

Bit early to call excellent but so far quality and tone seem good

I tried this product out as it sounded just what i wanted - a consistent and responsive tenor sax reed. The reeds are indeed very good and give me a very good overall sound. The strengths are softer compared to other makes, and where with other reeds I would normally use a 2.5, I have found a 3 more comparable. For me, they do not last as long as, say, the Francois Louis Excellence reeds, which is a shame with such a good sound. But I would definitely recommend them.

new product for me.. nice sound and a good price

Very warm, in fact a little soggy sounding. A little softer than most other brands. Early days.

Ordered a box of 2½s and received them next day +1 so super delivery again Dawkes, thanks. Spent a couple of hours with them today running though a few balads, a bit of jazz some swing numbers and a couple of my sax quartet titles. My set up is a vintage 1934 Selmer tenor with a vintage Ben Davis Vocaltone metal mpc. I'm impressed with the reeeds. They give a very clean, crisp sound especially down low. At first I felt they were sounding a bit thin in the higher register, but I found that as I adjusted to the reeds this feeling went away. I definitley needed to get used to them after playing my usual Gonzales 2¾ reeds because I found I was just giving the reed to much air. They need a lot less effort to blow than the Gonzales and I had to make some significant adjustmets because of that. In fact these reeds seems to play really quite soft in strength and I now realize I should have ordered the 3s not the 2½s, but hey, you live and learn. I'll clip one and see how it responds. I'm going to stick with these reeds for a couple of gigs to see how they last, but first impressions are that they deserve the 4 stars.

I'd been eagerly awaiting the arrival of these reeds. All the WoodStone product we've seen so far has been of the highest quality and these reeds are no exception.

From the first look even the box is quality, I blew through a box of Tenor 2.5 reeds, using a Navarro Metal Be Bop Special #8 mouthpiece. First impressions were..."wow!", 4 out of the 5 were pretty much the same feel and strength, with just 1 feeling a little harder than the others. For me on that set-up they were possibly a fraction soft but the benefit of that is that the tone was extremely clear and immediate.

The reeds give plenty of brilliance, cleanliness and punch to the sound, I usually use a Java 2.5 Green on this set-up and to me the WoodStone just had more ring and punch but maybe lost a little bit of the warmth and that would be my only query. The WoodStone has quite a thin tip which helps the feeling of immediacy which I like but some people prefer a slightly thicker tipped reed on some metal pieces to keep the fatness of tone.

All in all I think these WoodStone Tenor reeds are well worth a try, especially if you currently use Java (Green or Red) or Rico Jazz Select, you may find these a little more consistent and with the 'brilliance' and responsiveness of a really good feeling Java. Strength wise they do feel a bit softer than you may expect, I would say they match up about the same as Green Java though.