by David W. Shaffer, Inventor of Fibracell

Probably the first two people to make plastic reeds were Steve Broadus and Arnold Brilhart. If my information is correct, Steve was clarinetist with the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra at the age of 15 and later, in the 40’s, made mouthpieces for Benny Goodman and others. During the second World War, he made plastic reeds from styrene when the French cane was needed to hide soldiers.

Arnold Brilhart started his performance career in 1922, with all the great musical groups; the Dorsey’s, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong and others. In 1939, he began making mouthpieces such as the white "Tonalin" and plastic "Enduro" reeds. He subsequently worked for Rico in the later years of his life in a creative role until he passed away May 17, 1998, at 93 years of age.

In the 60’s, Steve Broadus worked with Arnold Brilhart, in Carlsbad, California, developing Fibercane, the first composite reed material. To my benefit, in his later years, Steve was my lunch buddy, confidant, mentor and chief motivator until he passed away in the early 1980’s.

In 1965, Arnold Brilhart finished and patented Fibercane on his own, from which flat reeds were made and sold to the Selmer company. The Selmer company bought out Brilhart and marketed the flat reeds for several years.

There have been numerous contributions to the plastic reed over the years, some injection molded, others presumably from flat sheet stock and Fibercane, made from Dacron fibers and epoxies. All of these products lack some or all of the following: pitch stability, rich "woody" tone and/or brilliance.

Technical Aspects of Fibracell

What Is Fibracell?

Fibracell is the reed mother nature would make if she had access to space age materials. Fibracell material is a sophisticated composite of aerospace materials designed to exactly duplicate the way nature constructs cane reed. Very stiff but sound absorbing Kevlar fibers are suspended in a lightweight resin formulation.

Fibracell composite reed material is the result of years of research and development, conceptualizing and augmenting state-of-the-art materials. The result is a composite material, which has characteristics comparable to natural cane reed in the following respects:

• Stiffness

• Specific Gravity

• Decay Factor

• Overtones or "Voice"

• Stiffness-to-weight ratio

• Color and appearance

It is the unique combination of the above properties that allows the natural cane reed to vibrate with a rich tonal quality. These qualities are emulated in Fibracell’s unique composite structure with the additional features of strength, long lasting durability and a consistency of quality not found in nature.

Visual Features

The visual similarity of Fibracell to cane, even with a microscope, is remarkable because its’ color and cross-section structure are almost identical in appearance to cane. Thus, the claim can accurately be made "It plays like cane because it’s made like cane…. Only stronger!" Fibracell reeds can quickly be distinguished from all other artificial reeds by a "float test". Drop a handful of plastic, cane and Fibracell reeds in a glass of water. Only the cane and Fibracell reeds will float. The plastic reeds will sink to the bottom. This demonstrates the similarity in density and specific gravity between natural cane and Fibracell material as opposed to the more dense plastic. The lightness of cane and Fibracell is important for high note stability and the formation of correct overtones.

Production

Fibracell is manufactured in a process that includes over ten production, machining and quality control operations, as opposed to simple injection molding like most plastic reeds. The materials used to produce the raw material are sophisticated and relatively expensive. The equipment used to produce it is extremely sensitive and complicated. Many factors contribute to its quality.

Once the material is produced, making reeds from it is done in almost exactly the same way cane reeds are produced with all the same cutting, milling, shaping, trimming and testing steps. In other words, the Fibracell reed is the result of a combination of expensive, sophisticated materials, many years of research and a labor intensive manufacturing and quality control process.