Klarinet Archive - Posting 000553.txt from 1999/07

From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Re: homespun instrument repair
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 17:57:10 -0400

On Sun, 18 Jul 1999, Bill Hausmann wrote:

> I must admit, though, DADS are even worse than music teachers! (Here,
> gimme that! I ain't payin' good money to get that mouthpiece unstuck!
> Where are my Vise-grips?)

Years ago, our trumpet teacher had an elementary school student, who came
to his lesson carrying a brown paper bag rather than his trumpet. He
thrust the bag at his teacher and said, "My Dad wants to know if you can
fix my trumpet."

Inside the bag were all the parts of a trumpet. It seems that the kid had
gotten his mouthpiece stuck, and in an attempt to free it, the Dad had
taken a blow torch with the intention of heating the lead pipe.
Unfortunately, he heated it quite a bit too much, thereby melting all the
solder joints throughout the entire instrument!

A similar horror story: When I was in high school many years ago, one of
my classmates got a new Selmer alto saxophone. Being very zealous of
caring for it properly, he oiled all the keys, rods and posts - and he
oiled it, and oiled it. Soon, he had such a gooey mess that the
instrument attracted all the dust in the county.

He decided to clean it, so he removed all the keys, put the body of the
instrument in the bathtub and scrubbed it with an abrasive cleanser and
steel wool! After having removed all the lacquer from the instrument, he
tried to reassemble it, and in the process, bent some keys, broke a few
springs, stripped the threads in the rods, etc. It cost him more to
repair his repairs than it had cost him to buy the saxophone.

Ed Lacy
el2@-----.edu

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