Haven’t played on the Légère bassoon reeds since 2018; at that time, my biggest issue was that the tip opening was too small, resulting in sharp reeds with a limited dynamic range. I had to open them up with a mandrel or plaque and hot water, which was always a bit dicey. This new Medium model is actually slightly too open, which is a better place to start! I closed the tip very slightly, and it is now very close to excellent. The only remaining issue is a bit of balkiness in extreme soft playing - it just doesn’t have quite the smooth tail on a niente fade that a well-adjusted cane reed has. Still, much more generally usable for many situations than the 2018 reeds! I’ll be buying and living with a few more of these, to see how the tip openings and extreme soft response vary amongst individual reeds. There’s certainly more variability between reeds than there is with the single reeds, so the improvements are enough to justify more testing.
