Ideal blade construction

I wish it was so easy; wouldn't have started EJ journey

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7-ply mono-material Cpen blade made of either all basswood or all ayous, weight between 105g-110g, 7.2-7.4mm thick, with stiffness (as indicated by frequency range) of between 1460-1490Hz, ideally minimal glue in between wood plies, shape: 150mm wide by 155mm long (shorter than average), with a slightly more pronounced neck flare, wider (fatter) handle than average and with the end of the handle protruding 2mm further down the blade surface than average.

This is from a single sided penhold short pimple player. Arrived at this conclusion after trying many blades including customs. Ideal "feel" is high but not extreme stiffness, medium touch yet high density smashing (opposite of "boxy"/hollow), crisp non-dampened impact feedback, linear response.

But precise characteristics are hard to achieve. So far, I have 3 blades within the ballpark of ideal parameters. Trying to optimize the last details, ordered 3 more, all of which fell outside of limits.

I did have my ideal blade built.

It's koto/limba/alc/kiri/alc/limba/koto, 6.2mm thick, 92g, with a elliptical/conical handle ( , modeled after ). The handle has relatively heavy Zebra wood in it, in order to shift balance a bit more towards the handle. I like to play harder rubbers, which tend to be quite heavy enough by themself already.

It's v2 of this "vanity" blade, the previous one (that got damaged, but has been restored) was nearly identical: 6.0mm thick, 89g, one anegre outer, same handle shape with less heavy woods.

As to the "why", trying a lot of blades I noticed that I liked harder (but not stone hard) outers, with koto and anegre blades standing out; and blades with kiri cores always felt better to me. So these I took as givens.. The Viscaria family felt near-perfect to me, and the best of these that I found was the Treiber K. No mass-produced blade had anything as natural (for me) as that particular handle, and I wasn't confident enough to play that power. OSP has the handle shape, but not the construction. So I sought to tone down just a bit by going to an inner layer composite construction. I think it worked out.

I haven't really been tempted by other blades since playing it. Getting older, I may at some point need to step down (again) in power. When that happens, I'll see.