Klarinet Archive - Posting 000158.txt from 1997/09

From: Roger Garrett <rgarrett@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: Selmer repair
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 22:10:26 -0400

I'm not sure anyone can get in trouble for asking the question....only if
they answer the question without really knowing the answer!

A repair person can literally destroy an instrument if they do not know
what they are doing. Ask any competent piano technician! One of our
Steinways was almost wrecked by a person who was inexperienced and tried
to do some kind of specialized voicing on the hammers. A clarinet, while
fairly simple in terms of construction, can be ruined if a person does not
know how to:

level tone holes, undercut bores, repair cracks, replace tenon corks,
adjust spring tension, tighten posts, etc......these are just a few of the
seeiming endless things that can negatively affect a clarinet's
performance. Many competent repair people actually get into the wood in
each of these "adjustments", and, once wood is removed, it cannot be
replaced easilly!

Roger Garrett

On Wed, 3 Sep 1997, Bill Hausmann wrote:

> I'm going to get in trouble again for asking this, but I don't understand
> how a repair person can "ruin" and instrument. Assuming he did not do
> anything ridiculous like alter the bore, what could he do that could not be
> repaired or readjusted relatively easily by someone else? Not to say that
> there are not incompetent people out there, just that I don't think they
> can do that much damage without messing with things they have no business
> messing with. And I doubt that they would go that far out of their way if
> they didn't know what they were doing.
>
>
>
> Bill Hausmann bhausman@-----.com
> 451 Old Orchard Drive http://www.concentric.net/~bhausman
> Essexville, MI 48732 http://members.wbs.net/homepages/z/o/o/zoot14.html
>
> If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is too loud.
>