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Re: How long can a clarinet last?

Author: clarnibass
Date: 2008-07-21 06:03

A local clarinetist has a Buffet RC Prestige. I only mention the model to show it is supposed to be a very good clarinet. It is about five years old. For a long time it didn't play right, with very stuffy and flat notes, especially in the throat area. She remembered it played fine before, but it has been to at least two repairers for the problem to be fixed (both times it improved, not completely fixed, and came back very quickly after). Her teacher told her maybe it's a crack, but they couldn't find one. He said the clarinet is very bad and she should probably get a different one instead i.e. it is blown out. When I checked the tone holes I found a lot of them had a lot of dirt on the bottom, like a nest of dirt making the tone holes smaller. This is a type of dirt that you couldn't remove with a pipe cleaner or q-tip, and not even with a regular small nylon brush. It needed a lot more cleaning than that to remove it, but after it was clean (and some other repairs) it played like new.

She was ready to change her clarinet but after the repair she isn't even considering it anymore. Just one example of a clarinet that was supposedly "blown out" but all it needed was some repair. I can understand why the player assumed it was "blown out" because it was only possible to see the problem by removing keys and looking with direct light to the holes, plus it was "repaired" twice by two different people so what was she supposed to think.

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How long can a clarinet last? new

LKKlarinet

2008-07-16 00:32