There is nothing more dangerous than a curious engineer! To further this discussion I just went out to the shop and did a little subjective experiment to determine the amount of air required to just get the reed to move in an Arkansas call vs a Reelfoot call. In order to tell about the experiment I have to now make an admission. I have in my shop 2 Arkansas calls that were custom tuned for me, one from RNT and another from Echo. Long story! I looked around and finally found a Reelfoot
What I did was barely blow a little air into the Arkansas calls and got immediate reed action. I repeated the process with a properly tuned Reelfoot and got the same response. The Arkansas call might have required slightly less air but the difference was minimal.
Again, the magic is in the insert. One of the first comments I got from my mentor was " not much reed action" or too much air required to break the reed loose. The second was "beautiful workmanship but sounds like crap". Problem: the tone channel was too deep!
Fred