Klarinet Archive - Posting 000603.txt from 1998/09

From: ROBERT HOWE <arehow@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Re:breaking in a clarinet or oboe or recorder or tarogato
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 02:09:31 -0400

This is always a hot topic, should we just take a new instrument and
"play the crap out of it", as one recent writer put it, or break it in
gradually as is so often advised. Some observations, which are
supported by empiric evidence. First, we know that cracks tend to occur
at times of instability: when the instrument is new, or stressed by
cold, or hasn't been palyed for a while. Seocnd, we know that cracks
can develop in wood that has reached a thermal equilibrium. Third, we
know that an instrument can crack from "being played cold" before the
bore has had a chance to expand, or in an area of the bore where the
breath does not reach and where the thermal changes are not occuring.

All of these observations suggest that it is not the wood but rather the
oils, water, solutes in teh wood whose behavior leads to cracking. A
writer in the 1997 CIMCIM manual, Care of Historic Musical Instruments,
sums up the evidence as best supporting the hypothesis that changes in
the elasticity of waxy/oily substances in the wood, induced by vibration
or by thermal shifts, causes cracking.

If this is the case, we are clearly best off keeping the clarinet at
some equilibrium which most closely approaches the played state. A case
humidifier and storage in a warm room would seem to be in order.
Breaking in? Hard to say.

For the record, I played the crap out of my Buffet R13 (fall 1994) and
it is intact. I slowly broke in my Loree oboe (Spring 1996) and it
suffered a catastrophic crack. So did my Vas Dias baroque oboe, which I
also played the crap out of. Go figure. My Buffet Eb and bass
clarinets, and my Loree English horn, oboe d'amopre and bass oboe, which
get intermittent hours of intense use after months off, are all crack
free. Maybe it's Kismet.

Robert Howe

-------------------------------------------------------------------------