Klarinet Archive - Posting 000136.txt from 2002/10

From: w9wright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] cleaning an old mouthpiece
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 14:43:30 -0400

<><> Marc=A0Vanelverdinghe wrote:
I did not use warm water to clean the mouthpiece. I thought it was a
wooden mouthpiece, not hard rubber as you mentioned. Although I'm no
longer sure of this. Anyhow, it's still green.

The fact that the mouthiece turned green (or greenish-brown) is good
evidence that it's hard rubber rather than acrylic plastic. Without
meaning to tell you something that you may already know, "hard rubber"
is truly hard, not 'rubbery' at all.

Just for the heck of it, I searched a couple of places (the Klarinet
archives and also Google) for any connection between vinegar and color
change. (Did you know that polo players use hard rubber mouthpieces
and clean them with vinegar? I didn't.) I couldn't find any mention of
a connection between vinegar and color change.

Several web pages warn about color-change related to direct sunlight
exposure. Is there any chance that you left the mouthpiece sitting in
direct sunlight in order to dry it off?

Being a school band instrument, I guess it's possible that the
mouthpiece is an inexpensive one and the rubber wasn't completely cured
or the material was 'off-grade' or something like that. Color change
from washng in cold water & vinegar isn't supposed to happen.

Cheers,
Bill

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