So we've all seen it or done it. Someone is playing on a reed that should have been trashed weeks ago (hinted by chips, mold, and cracks). Don't worry, there is a solution. Kindly ask to, or if you are a teacher, demand to check the quality of the reed by wall testing it. Take the reed, walk up to a wall and mash it, tip first into the wall. If it survives, it passed! If it cracks in half... someone needs a new reed. It's fool proof and tons of fun! Try it, go out and wall test that reed!!!

Thats great! I am tutoring two bassoonists, one of which who split his reed down the middle and is trying to play it after taping the crack closed...I would LOVE to see his face when the reed smashes into a million pieces...Min you, this guy got nacho cheese sauce all over his bassoon the first time he tried to play it...don't ask me how!

Also there are lots of bassoons that people are trying to play which need this treatment.

Are bassoon reeds that hard because if I did that with a good oboe reed, it would still crack.

LOL...like my old plastic selmer?

yes, bassoon reeds are much heartier, and they last much longer. However, they are just as tempermental as oboe reeds.

Wow! Wall testing a bassoon!!! That's just hillarious!

I know a couple of Bassoonist I would've liked to wall test.

But I like 99% of the Bassoonists I have met.