Run, don't walk, to get yourself the Vandoren ZZ reeds. They're fabulous! EXTREMELY responsive and they wear like iron. My alto reed is now close to a year old and I'm more worried about it from a hygienic standpoint than it wearing out or sounding bad. It's needed a clipping every few months just to keep the end from fraying, but its an unbelievable lifetime. I'm moving to use these great reeds for all of my horns. Bari is going to take a while, since I don't play it as often, and I've got a huge stock of reeds that work fine. Same goes for soprano. Alto and Tenor are using ZZ regularly.
Its hard to quantify what "extremely responsive" really means, but it comes down to this: you get consistent tone and the reed is always "ready to go"...there's a very short wetting period..maybe 2-3 minutes tops. Once you play on it for about 5 minutes its fully warmed up and you get top performance until it gets waterlogged...which seems to be towards the end of the 4th 45 minute set playing lead Alto in a big band. Or the end of a 3rd 70 minute set in the blues band. These reeds are workhorses!
Remember: Run, don't walk!
