 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Joris van den Berg
Date: 1999-10-19 08:17
recently I got a remark i cleaned my wooden clarinet with the wrong cloth. The one i use currently is made of shammy. It should have been silk, to pollish the inside of the instrument.
Is this just a myth or would it truely be smart to adjust my methods of cleaning?
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-10-19 12:18
Some people swear by chamois, some by silk. You're not doing anything wrong using the chamois.
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Author: Bart
Date: 1999-10-19 15:47
I´ve never used anything other than cotton: it absorbs well, and it´s soft to the instrument.
I would think that cotton does a better job at absorbing than silk, but I´m not sure about this.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-10-19 16:02
Bart wrote:
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I´ve never used anything other than cotton: it absorbs well, and it´s soft to the instrument.
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Cotton has a tendency to leave lint behind in register tubes, and gets stuck very easily in the narrow bore of the A clarinet.
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Author: paul
Date: 1999-10-19 21:33
I use the same type of cloth that came with my instrument when it was brand new. It's nice to have the luxury of a brand new horn. Since my Buffet Festival came with a Buffet cloth that had a covered weight pull-through, I figure using another Indian cotton cloth with a covered weight pull-through is okay.
However, just because it came with the horn, does that mean it's still a good idea to use it? The obvious answer doesn't mean it's the correct answer. So, what do other folks advise for this situation?
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-10-19 22:22
paul wrote:
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However, just because it came with the horn, does that mean it's still a good idea to use it
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The Buffet cloth swab became firmly stuck in my son's Festival A a good 30 minutes after buying it. It took Tom Ridenaur a good 20 minutes to get it unstuck (Tom was walking by at the Clarinetfest we bought it at).
Needless to say - my son's never used a "Buffet" cotton swab again.
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Author: Meri
Date: 1999-10-19 23:28
What you want is a cloth that absorbs all excess moisture well, yet does not get stuck easily in the instrument. For both these reasons, chamois cloths are not good.
Below is some instructions on how to make one.
Get a small 9"x10", dish towel, slightly used, which is about 85% cotton/15% polyester.If the sides of the towel are too thick, you can trim them, and then resew the edges. Tie a round, somewhat thick, shoestring on one corner.It must be long enough to go through the barreljoint from the bell.
The reason swabs sometimes get stuck is if they are not folded out fully, too big, or are too rectangular.
This swab has never gotten stuck in the six years I used one. And it absorbs the moisture very well.
Meri
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-10-19 23:33
Meri wrote:
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What you want is a cloth that absorbs all excess moisture well, yet does not get stuck easily in the instrument. For both these reasons, chamois cloths are not good.
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Some people feel the swab is not to absorb moisture, but to evenly distribute the "normal" moisture throughout the bore. Check the Klarinet Archives for more discussion.
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Below is some instructions on how to make one.
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While a diskh towelmay be a good swab, it isn't a true "chamois". Chamois is a very thin treated leather, and is very absorbent. Car buffs use the real thing to dry their cars.
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Author: Eoin
Date: 1999-10-20 07:08
If you decide to use the pull through that comes with your new Buffet instrument, make sure to wash it and dry it first, as this will soften it up.
Does anybody know, when you are using a pull through on the upper joint, which end you should pull from? Should the cloth go in at the bell end and out at the mouthpiece end, or the other way around?
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Author: Bart
Date: 1999-10-20 10:01
Mark Charette wrote:
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Some people feel the swab is not to absorb moisture, but to evenly distribute the "normal" moisture throughout the bore. Check the Klarinet Archives for more discussion.
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Why settle for ´distribution´, when you can get rid of all moist just as easy?
The cotton pull-through swab (German make, don´t know the producer) I bought at my clarinet shop (with a kind of long ´shoe lace´ with a weight on the end) does not plush and leaves no material in the instrument. I play Bb clarinet only, no A clarinet for me, but it would take a *very* narrow bore for the piece of cloth to get stuck.
EOIN wrote:
Does anybody know, when you are using a pull through on the upper joint which end you should pull from? Should the cloth go in at the bell end and out at the mouthpiece end, or the other way around?
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I always take the instrument apart, so I can dry the joints too.
If the clarinet is wet only in the upper part of the joint I want to dry, I start at the bottom. This way, the moist is not redistributed to where there was no moist in the first place.
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Author: Rex Tomkinson
Date: 1999-10-20 14:06
To Eoin
I have developed the habit of swabbing the instrument in the direction of the airflow-always from the mouthpiece end. The reason for this is that if any moisture residue is left behind after swabbing (as it probably always is)you are 'dragging' the moisture in the direction of tone holes that are larger (being closer to the bell) and therefore less effected by moisture. A bit pedantic maybe, but it seems to make sense. Happy swabbing.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-10-20 21:03
On the upper joint most people swab from top to bottom in order to be able to pull the swab out in case it gets stuck ( a real possibility on an A clarinet).
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Author: Barry
Date: 1999-10-22 11:45
The Buffet-Crampon cotton cloth, I discovered, has grown about 25 percent in size over the past 15 years. My old one never got stuck in all the time I used it. A new one got stuck the first time I pulled it through, and no wonder, because it was then that I discovered it was not only much bigger, but also made (in India) of thicker cotton. My advice is to trim and hem the cloth where the pattern ends, in other words, take about one inch off each side.
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