What are your opinions on Lesher reeds?

Personally, I like them a lot..but I was wondering what everybody else thought of them.

never used that brand

what do y`all think about La Voz?? i think those are pretty good

I used LaVoz once, I liked it..

I ordered it when I tried about 5 different types.

So far, I like Lesher the most.

Handmade reeds are the best to have though..

I found leshers very playable (I got the reg model not the artist or pro series - am interested in knowing how these compare to the lower end model) - however my teacher did a reed inventory when I started lessons, she didn`t like the tone or tuning they had - the ones I had could well have been in the process of dying - I played on the 3 I had almost exclusivly for a month. Incidentally after de-caning some I found that the fit a pisoni mandrel well enough to recycle the staples (the mandrel comes about 1mm shy of the end on most, flush on a few).

At the first lesson I wound up with a doctored Jones (she thinned the tip) & doctored La Voz (thined the tip & wired it) - she never wires oboe reeds but she wanted to make sure I had 2 reeds going into the next week and it was to wild/raucus otherwise. The lavoz lasted a few days & went kinda nuts, the jones is now too frayed so I`m playing on ones I`ve been making until the ones I ordered from North Texas Oboe Reeds come in (teacher recomendation - she tried one @ the last IDRS convention - we`ll know for sure if they are still any good after they get here). Her suggestion was if I buy "store bought" again get hard or med-hard & scrape it down because often times the machining takes too much off in the wrong places.

However she has ruled my handmade ones better than the storebought ones I bought previously (and she is in shock about how they`ve turned out since I`ve only tried making reeds for the last month & haven`t been taught - just seen a lot of pictures on the internet - and watch her touch up 2 reeds for me). All she does with my handmade ones is thin the tip a litte more and maybe puts some fishskin on it.

I really like the lesher reeds. I will admit they dont have the BEST tone but they`re pretty good. They last a long time and I don`t think mine ever played out of tune. But one of my friends had one also and she had some problems with it. I guess it all really depends on the player.