 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: zuzu
Date: 2004-05-12 12:45
Hee hee. I was reading the post about replacing old reeds and was wondering what type of make-shift repairs people have done in a pinch. The type that would make your music teachers cringe and the local repair guy choke....
Waaaay back when (over 20 yrs ago) when I was in high school, we used to 'clip' our reeds with scissors (too lazy to switch out and break a new one in) and the local music store was not the best, so one summer while waiting for a new pad, I used a piece of craft felt. And once in college, my ligature broke right before a parade, so I used a piece of duct tape to hold my reed on. (BOY, did it leave a mess on the mouthpiece)
(These methods are NOT advisable) hehe..of course, today I would never do these things (my clarinet is better cared for)
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Author: Jhall
Date: 2004-05-12 13:27
My first band director, way back in the '50's, had an interesting way to fix our chipped reeds. He would take a quarter and hold it at the tip, just low enough that it missed the "gaps." Taking a lit match, he burned off the rough edge and we had a new reed And all day everyone could tell who got their reed fixed that day! I still have a fondness for the taste of charcoal.
Oh, don't ever try to apply a tenon cork with stick shellac to a plastic clarinet. A polycylindrical bore is great; an oval bore is not!
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2004-05-12 13:49
Rubber bands for springs, various tapes for tenon corking, pads down to the felt, home-bent keys, even a demonstration of playing problems with a chipped mp UPSIDE DOWN [reed on top], all in a repairer's day's work ?? Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: OpusII
Date: 2004-05-12 14:07
A friend of me did clean the clarinet….. After removing the keywork he took a bucket water and lay the wood in it…. I don’t think that I’ve to explain what happened in the water!
I’ve also have lent a shoe lace as ligature because someone forgot it at a rehearsal and he played great
Much more strange things happen, I think that we could write a book about this…..
Eddy
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Author: Ralph G
Date: 2004-05-12 14:21
Back in my beginner days I recall once scrubbing the gunk off my mouthpiece with a Brillo pad.
And in the summer of '96, minutes before a municipal band concert, I lost the pad from the cup between the chalumeau E and D keys, so I had to fake my way through the show. The repair shop had a big backlog, so I superglued in a piece of cork and it worked fine for (I'm ashamed to say) several years before my wife finally took that horn to the shop for a proper overhaul.
________________
Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.
- Pope John Paul II
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2004-05-12 14:38
Let's see......just before one wind band concert a spring broke on a key that is normally open on my bass clarinet --- since there was no way to hold it open using the normal wraparound-rubber-band method, I had to loop a rubber band over the top of a "tower" (an upright tube of cork grease) then down around a post at the other end --- so I played the whole concert with this tube of cork grease sticking up from my horn. Fellow players were amused......
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Author: ginny
Date: 2004-05-12 14:58
I have bent my keys right, my son has used a bass clarinet rubber band spring, simply disabled a trill key that leaked by stuffing plastic wrap under it (the marching clarinet) and such.
Currently I am using post it notes or dental floss to pad out my pitiful corks.
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Author: Rick Williams
Date: 2004-05-12 15:17
Let's see, I've used chewing gum to put a pad back on. I used a rubber band to hold the register key on when the screw fell out. Scotch tape to replace a ligerature and sheet music paper to keep the bell on when the cork fell off. Think that's about it.
Since we are kinda on the subject, I'd really like to hear a discussion about the tonal properties of various brands of tape when used as a lig.....I think this is important to know when faced with the numerous options out there. Do European players have a secret brand for that dark color they are known for? Come on, share....BG!
Best
Rick
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Author: GBK
Date: 2004-05-12 16:57
As one of my 4th grade beginning clarinet students sadly learned (along with his mother):
Don't attempt to clean a plastic mouthpiece by putting it in the dishwasher ...GBK
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Author: hans
Date: 2004-05-12 20:07
(I think I posted this once before?)
In the early '90s my tenor sax wasn't playing as well as I thought it should so I bought a set of pads and replaced the original ones. It played much worse after that. Fortunately, after having the job re-done by an expert, it plays perfectly now.
Subsequently, I tried to re-pad an old clarinet which was in very poor condition; i.e., I had nothing to lose except time and the price of a set of pads.
There will not be a third attempt, since the clarinet results were similar to the sax's and I have learned the "do not try this at home" lesson.
Other than tightening a screw if needed, I take it to a Pro.
Hans
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2004-05-12 20:11
Hans is much too humble --- I have in fact seen a clarinet upper joint which he repadded, and it seals and works just fine. He is nothing like the inept rookie he's trying to snooker you into thinking he is (you know how devious those Canadian clarinetists are....)
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Author: mw
Date: 2004-05-12 20:20
Why stop at "make-shift" repairs? How about including "repair jobs gone(r)wild" ...
AND, lets put emphasis on the (noun) GONER !
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Author: jbutler ★2017
Date: 2004-05-13 02:18
While working at a local music store in repair, customer laid said alto sax on the counter for an inspection. The shop foreman looked at the sax and gave the customer an estimate on the repairs. He took off to do something leaving the sax case on the counter. Another customer came in with a repair. I reached to put the sax on the "to do" shelf not realizing the case latches were not fastened. Ten feet and a great two and a half gainer later the said sax landed on the floor. The upper end was SOOOOO bent and deformed the store kept it for a parts horn and gave the customer a new one. I don't take FULL credit for the disaster....but did make sure case latches were actually LATCHED after that.
jbutler
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2004-05-13 02:57
Once, when I was rather greener as a repairer, I could not get a jammed crown cork out of a flute head. (The cork has metal ends.)
I eventually resorted to a long punch, and hammered away, quite severely. Ah! At last the cork was moving. After a few more millimetres I investigated why once it started, it was moving so reluctantly.
I had been hammering the punch through the wall of the flute!
I cleaned up the mess of distorted metal, cut the hole to a neat circle, soldered the end of a silver rod into it, cut the rod off, and attended to cosmetics. No visible or functional damage.
Fortunately the instrument was a school one and a Lark - as bad a brand as one could buy then - so I did not feel I needed to confess.
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Author: Neil
Date: 2004-05-13 03:24
I broke the register key screw once so I took the screw in to work and checked the thread pitch - 56 threads per inch. I found out that remote control airplanes use a rod which is a foot long and threaded at 2-56 the last inch or so. I got one of those rods at a local hobby shop for about a buck and discovered that while the unthreaded diameter was a perfect fit the threaded portion of the original screw was smaller in diameter (1-56). Undaunted, I chucked the rod up in a reversible drill and ran the threads back and forth oover a triangular jeweler's file until I got it down to the proper size. Then I cut and slotted the rod with a Dremel tool and installed the screw. It is still in place and working fine.
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Author: Neil
Date: 2004-05-13 03:33
After I wrote the above post, I remembered how I broke the screw; it jammed on some solder I had gotten in the screw-hole when I did a solder repair to the register key over a candle flame. Said solder repair is also still holding.
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Author: bnanno
Date: 2004-05-13 08:46
Well, Rick,
I think the secret is not in the scotch (tape I mean)...in our school, all these emergencies happen when the secretary has left, so only the porter-maintainance-receptionist guy is open, and he has a box of handy sticking plasters that seem to solve a range of problems....
By the way, this is a deviaiton, but whatever happened to the person who wanted adice becuase he was making a clarinet in his dad's DIY workshop? ANyone knows how he is getting on? Just curious...l
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Author: mw
Date: 2004-05-13 18:43
Neil said:
"Undaunted, I chucked the rod up in a reversible drill and ran the threads back and forth oover a triangular jeweler's file until I got it down to the proper size."
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Obviously, you have a nice touch. This is probably one of those "don't try this @ home for most people". However, you had nothing to lose at the time. Kudos to your ingenuity & thanks for sharing.
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2004-05-13 22:33
A repair job gone wild that led to a makeshift repair:
When my daughter started to take lessons, her first clarinet was a Malerne that I used until my second year of college. Her teacher noted that the touch on the throat A key was rather high and awkward for her so I took it to a repair shop I used regularly to be bent a bit. They had just hired a new tech and he worked on my horn. While I was waiting, I could hear a constant tapping noise from the shop but I didn't think anything of it because there were several repair techs back there working on a variety of instruments at the time. When I got the instrument back, however, I saw a large number of small dents between the cup and the touch -- it looks like the "tech" "bent" the key by hammering it with the edge of a fairly sharp-edged bar (the pattern of notches appears too irregular to be from pliars with teeth). To make matters worse, the first time my daughter played the instrument, the key detached itself from its tube. The hammering apparently broke the solder conncection. Since I have always been a failure when it comes to soldering (and didn't have the materials and equipment to silver solder in any case), I simply superglued the tube back onto the key. The "repair" held for several months until I got my daughter another instrument. AFAIK, it's still holding.
Oh yes, I couldn't ask for my money back because the shop owner did not charge me for the repair in the first place. Until then, I'd been a good customer but since then, I've never been back.
Best regards,
jnk
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