Author: Joel Clifton
Date: 2003-03-25 01:55
When I got my new R-13 a few weeks ago, I noticed that the middle joint was very tight, so tight that I was afraid to twist it to get the final 1/4th of an inch for fear of bending a key or something. I had to press it together by putting the bell on my leg and pushing down on the barrel. It would slam together every time, and I was afraid it would cause damage. At first I thought it was the cork, so I sanded it down. It didn't help. Then I realized that the resistance felt like wood-on-wood, because it was not a smooth motion when I got it to twist, it was a jerking, snapping motion. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I very carefully shaved some wood off of the joint with a tiny wood scraping tool, and now I have no problems with it.
That wasn't the first time I fiddled with my R-13. I'm kind of a do-it-yourself kind of guy. After I purchased my clarinet, I noticed that the C#/G# key was very badly in the way when I tried to hit the C/G tone hole. Looking at it more closely, the key was more than twice as far from the left hand F/C key than it was on my Vito. So I took the key off, grabbed one end with some rubber-tipped pliers, bent it a bit by hand, and put it back on. It works absolutely perfectly now, and there is a 2mm gap between the two keys instead of the previous 5-6mm or so.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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