 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Meri
Date: 2000-06-13 20:41
What are your horror stories of clarinets you've seen in really bad shape, of any make or grade?
This can involve things such as missing springs, broken cork on tenon joints, noisy keys, etc.
Meri
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: paul
Date: 2000-06-13 21:17
There has to be a bunch of garage sale horror stories. I know the trendy chain restaurants in town have old beat up instruments tacked to their walls for decor. Is this the kind of story you are wanting?
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Kontragirl
Date: 2000-06-13 21:53
I have a story for you. One day a friend of mine asked me if I would take a look at her clarinet. She claimed she couldn't get a note out of it.
It went home with me. At first glance it looked fine, so I decided to try to play it. My mouthpiece didn't fit, it was too big. I held up the two mouthpieces and hers was _a lot_ smaller! I took out my clarinet and compared them, it was just awful! It was heavy with a small bore. Judging by the case, I would say it's a cheap chinese import.
So, I called her up and said, "This clarinet is crap! Where'd you find it, a dumpster?"
Imagine my surprise when she said yes.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Meri
Date: 2000-06-13 22:28
Mark requested that I start, so here it goes.
One of the members in my college band owns and plays an old B&H clarinet. Well, a lot of things are wrong with it. The bottom tenon on the upper joint was covered in masking tape, because the cork had fallen off.Didn't get it repaired the entire season. The instrument has probably never seen a drop of key oil in at least several years. The instrument has probably never received an overhaul. The action of the keys was really noisy; really needs to be silenced. A broken key (the LH F/C) doesn't look normal; it looks like someone attempted to solder a piece of metal to the broken key. The pads (all felt) have probably not been replaced in years.A couple of missing screws.
I wonder how she can ever play this instrument.I even told her to get it repaired (which given the shape of her instrument, is probably not worth it) or get a new instrument. It costs very little to recork a tenon joint, (since a good one lasts for years, unlike her masking tape solution),the key oil is very inexpensive, and doing it only takes a few minutes about once a month (for her, might be every 2-3 months, because she doesn't play that often outside of rehearsal).
Meri
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Joey
Date: 2000-06-13 23:02
Hmmm, worst I've seen? Just a week or two ago...
I always helped my teacher do the clarinet inventory at the high school, been something I liked to do just to help out. Well, we had to go through every clarinet in the music building, checking them for playing condition...
I opened up this one old, black case to the sight of a nast, pale green lined inner case. I wasn't sure if it was a normal green before and sort of decayed into its present state, or if it had always looked so gross. Well, the clarinet itself was no piece of art either. First, there were rubber bands holding down the side trill keys to keep them from falling off, and most of the pads looked like they'd been chewed off by a band rat. Then, in order to play test it, we had to actually use the tone holes caked with green mold lol. Needless to say, a lot of soap and water was needed to get the nasty stuff off. That's about it, impossible to play on and as moldy as the bread behind the refrigerator.
Joey
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Jessica
Date: 2000-06-14 01:00
I recently gave a lesson to a girl who had a new clarinet and mouthpiece. The clarinet was from Sears and made in China. The mouthpiece was made by Rico. It was a new setup but was by far the worst quality clarinet I've ever seen.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: David Spiegelthal
Date: 2000-06-14 13:54
I've bought many low-priced clarinets on the eBay auction site, nearly all of which I've been able to restore to good playing condition. One, however, turned out to be hopeless. It was an old Noblet plateau-key clarinet which, unbeknownst to me (not mentioned in the eBay description) had apparently been sitting in water for who knows how long. All the keywork was rusted and stiff, none of the keys could be moved and I couldn't remove any of the screws to take the clarinet apart. The whole thing went into the trash -- $40 completely wasted.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: paul
Date: 2000-06-14 14:22
My tutor's Buffet R-13 is a piece of junk from Buffet's low quality era (late 1970s to early 1980s). Sure, at first, the horn looked fine, but this pro knew there was something wrong with it. Initially, intonation was very much a foreign concept for this horn. None of the obvious things worked to bring it in tune. He looked at the horn in extreme detail and found that the bell was out of round. Plastic putty inside the bell and trial and error over a few months finally fixed it up. Field modification number one (of a lot more to come...). The horn's wood has never been treated and in the hands of this guy, it got very badly worn through the years. A crack or two has been pinned, tone holes have been puttied, and keys were bent to account not only intonation, but also for a really bad case of arthritis. Keys are badly worn in several areas. You can easily tell this guy slides a lot because the erosion on the keys is blatantly obvious. But that's not all. Since he knew the horn wasn't going to change hands ever again, what the heck, why not make the keys work better with arthritic fingers, too. So, there are really ugly drops of lead solder on some of the keys. All in all, I wouldn't give a plug nickel for what looks like a piece of well worn junk. Neither would you, right?
I've played that well worn piece of junk. The springs are just as good as my brand new Festival. The key action is lightning quick. And you should hear the tone. Better than my Festival, even after it was highly regulated (tweaked). Intonation (after about 30 years of professional iterations, of course) is dead on for anything I could hope to play. This guy makes a living on a daily basis with this horn. All the audience cares about is performance and sound. Looks don't count for anything.
My tutor drooled over my Festival every time I opened the case. Like the phrase goes, "he may be senior, but he's not blind". Of course he loved playing my sexy new horn with silver keys and all of the bells and whistles. Who wouldn't? But in the end, he still went back to his beater of an R-13. Why? Because he knows that horn extremely intimately well. And yes, I earnestly believe he can still out play most pros in the area on that beater of a horn, even with severe arthritis and hearing aids. That's because in the end, nothing can replace pure skill and experience.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-06-14 17:57
The worst clarinet I ever saw was at the Renninger's outdoor Extravaganza (a huge flea market, held several times per year in a field in Kutztown, Pennsylvania). I've forgotten the brand name now (it was one of those unfamiliar no-names), but it was a metal clarinet from about the 1930s, probably. It had no case, no mouthpiece and no barrel joint. Someone had removed the register key (permanently; it wasn't with the clarinet), probably in order to hang the instrument on the wall with the hook through the register key tone hole. The metal of this clarinet was so soft that the wall hook had partially ripped open the top of the hole. The bell (this was a two-piece instrument, with upper joint, lower joint and barrel as one piece) apparently made the clarinet stick out from the wall too much, so someone had flattened the back of the bell by simply crushing it in! The screws had visible rust. The nickel silver plating had worn through in many places, revealing some sort of pot-metal. For this beauty, the dealer wanted $150! I passed up this "bargain"....
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: SusieQ
Date: 2000-06-15 01:48
I haven't been able to beat the worst clarinet stories, but I have a tuba story. The tuba player in the community band I play in got a tuba out of somone's garage. It was in pieces and dented, when he picked the parts up crud started falling out. He brought it to the carwash and used the pressure hose on it and flushed out 3 dead mice. He had before and after pictures. Many months and dollars later, it was fully restored. He played it band last night and it is one of the most beautiful instruments I have ever seen, and he said it plays great too. You never know what you will find in an old junker.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Annette
Date: 2000-06-15 12:59
This subject group caught my eye!!
The worst clarinet I have seen has to be one a customer bought into us saying she had problems blowing it. I looked into the bore of the top joint and it was full of spiders web's and a couple of dead spiders (she had actually tried to blow it in this condition!). I picked up the bottom joint which was in a similar condition except the spiders weren't dead.............
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Contragirl
Date: 2000-06-15 16:11
Let's see.... I have a few.
When I first started high school, I was the first Contralto player in forever. This was in the old bandroom before renovations. So they took the 2 contras from the top shelf of the bandroom, and when I opened the cases, all of the keys were ripped off. And the length of the posts and all, that was a lot of freakin work to fix for the tech.
When we were moving from the old bandroom to the new bandroom, we had to move the instruments over. Not only did we find this girl's "stolen" flute from 3 years ago, but we found some clarinet cases. Opening one of the cases showed us a brand new, unused tampon. I thought it was interesting that someone could play one, but ok. Then, a drummer (being an ignorant guy) decided that he was gonna open it and fill it with water... but that's a different story.
And the last one... my bari sax....
We have a mouse in our new bandroom, and we named him Percy.(After Grainger) He runs around the bandroom, I chase him... etc... cute lil thing. I wanted this old King Zypher Bari Sax that needs to be fixed, so my director gave it to me. I opened the case one day and Percy jumped out. HAHAHA! I had disturbed his home, but at least it wasn't full of nasty stuff...
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Doc
Date: 2000-06-15 23:04
I have some real good horror tales of just about any type of instrument thought this might be ab appropriate place to share for you guys. We'll start with clarinets and stupidity- One girl I knew decided it would be great to march her wooden nobele (think that's it) for 2 years.... and after those two years of being out in the sun it has a "nice" finish... well not really and there's a pinned stress fracture on it too... Now that's just stupidity... Next, I've seen a clarinet literally fall apart in a feellow band member's hands... the tennon joint between the upper and lower stack snapped in half as she took her clar apart (well really the school's). Next on the list was the most thourghouly worn bass clarinet in the world... you know how you can feel when someone played a clarinet and the rings one nice and worn in? this one had rings that were partially gone... and noce cause they were cut apart, they really seemed to have just worn away... I think this inst. was also marched as the strap hooks have been "industrialized" It reminds me of how an old Mark 6 sax looks after a looong time in smoke enviroments cause the plating is so incredibly worn on the bell and the neck. What an instrument... While I'm on a roll let's talk about other stuff... At a band festival I met this one girl playing a tenor sax... it looked odd-and for good reason... a tree had fallen on the bell, not a big tree but on big enough to cave in the side and render low B and Bb useless... Then of course there's the school's old bass sax... This is an interesting story... We call this sax the vessel, it's an old bass sax that is just BROKE... we sent it to get it repaired one year, and the next school year the case came back with a bass sax in it and a note that read something like "Yup it's broke" no attempt to even try and fix it... But oh well... Ahhh the love of instruments
-Dave
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-06-16 13:46
SusieQ wrote:
-------------------------------
I haven't been able to beat the worst clarinet stories, but I have a tuba story....
-------------
Flea market tubas are legendary for their wretchedness. I think most of them are school instruments that met with a bad end. Nearly all have major dents, crushed pipes, etc. The saddest one I saw was an antique, silver-plated Getzen bass horn with engraving from mouthpipe to bell. In good condition, such a tuba is worth something to a collector. Unfortunately, this one looked as if it literally got run over by a truck, that had crushed it quite flat. I saw this intstrument at Shupp's Grove shortly after dawn. I couldn't find a price tag on it. Yes, I was interested, because a repairman had told me this type of damage isn't necessarily hopeless. I figured that if I could get this bass horn for less than $40, I'd take a chance on it. Well, the dealer had sacked out in the back of his van with the door opened. He looked and smelled as if he hadn't bathed or changed his clothes in about a year and he just sorta didn't impress me as the type of guy I wanted to risk startling by waking him up, so I never did find out how much he wanted for the bass horn. Probably just as well....
[Digression: I meant "bell" above, where I wrote that the wall hanging was the type of metal clarinet where what I called the "barrel" -- i.e., the bell -- the lower joint and the upper joint were made all in once piece. For some reason I reverse those two words again and again.]
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: jim lande
Date: 2000-06-17 03:05
Well, naturally the worst clarinet I have seen is a metal clarinet. This was the second part of a package where everyone was bidding on the first horn. I am not exactly sure what happened to it. My best guess is that some or many broken keys were replaced with keys from a completely different model. Parts have had to be cut away to get them over or under other keys. Ugly.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-06-17 20:20
jim lande wrote:
-------------------------------
Well, naturally the worst clarinet I have seen is a metal clarinet. This was the second part of a package where everyone was bidding on the first horn. I am not exactly sure what happened to it. My best guess is that some or many broken keys were replaced with keys from a completely different model. Parts have had to be cut away to get them over or under other keys. Ugly.
--------------------
Don't you just love those job lots? The auctioneer sees something in there that's obviously not going to get one bid. Nobody wants it at any price -- so the auctioneer unloads the problem on someone else, by pairing it up with something nifty. Kevin and I had our yard sale this morning. No musical instruments in this one, but I swear that half the stuff we got rid of was the detritus from auction job lots. The amazing thing is that, at a yard sale, people will buy almost anything. Every year, we sell stuff that's so bad we almost chucked it in the trash instead of bothering to put it out. Of course, people say the same thing about my yard sale "finds" -- I remember the day I bought a deceased pipe organist's lifetime collection of sheet music for $10. New, that music, much of it masterpieces of the literature in fine-quality editions, would have cost me hundreds of dollars. As Kevin and I lugged the enormous carton down the organist's son's driveway, we overheard him say to his wife, "Well, that saved me a trip to the dump! I can't believe people will buy all this [bleep]!"
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Dee
Date: 2000-06-18 02:06
Lelia wrote:
-------------------------------
... Of course, people say the same thing about my yard sale "finds" -- I remember the day I bought a deceased pipe organist's lifetime collection of sheet music for $10. New, that music, much of it masterpieces of the literature in fine-quality editions, would have cost me hundreds of dollars. As Kevin and I lugged the enormous carton down the organist's son's driveway, we overheard him say to his wife, "Well, that saved me a trip to the dump! I can't believe people will buy all this [bleep]!"
-------------------------------
This seller was merely ignorant in evaluating what he had. Simply because he had no use for it, he classified it as trash. I wonder how many treasures have gone to the dump for just such a reason. While I personally have no interest in organ music, I certainly would not have dumped it. Instead, I would have broken in down into somewhat smaller lots and found some place (flea market, auction, or whatever) and sold each lot for that amount.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Willie
Date: 2000-06-19 05:13
When I was buyimg some old jazz/classical LPs at a resale (junk) shop, I noticed a concert tuba hanging from the ceiling with flowers handing out of the bell. The first thing I said was "why did you paint it green"? The lady said it was hot pink for a Mardi Gras float when she found it. Well I bought it for $50 and lugged it home much to my wifes chagrin. It took 2 cans of powerfull aircraft stripper and 8 hrs of scubbing to get all the paint off. Under the green was the hot pink, followed by a layer of thick black, then silver. It was much lighter now and turned out to be an old Pan American, not known as a good brand but it was almost dent free. The bell was unusually straight for an old tuba. I got the tuning crooks loose and working and a minor repair to the first valve and it was playable. I took it to rehearsal and had our ace tubist test fire it for me and with the brass completely stripped, it sounded really good. Even more fun was the fact it is an Eb model and the tubist (we didn't tell him) was confused as why the notes were coming out wrong. But with his lips it sounded much better than I expected. Now when we need an extra tuba, one of our euphonium players, a G clef man all the way, uses it because its easier to transpose with.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Kontragirl
Date: 2000-06-19 18:22
That's kind of nice, a happy ending! An old junker turns out to be not so bad.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
