 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: RobertWYu
Date: 2015-02-18 10:39
Hi everyone,
I understand that a new wooden clarinet, or one that hasn't been played in some time, should be broken in by playing it for a little bit each day, then slowly increasing the playing time. I was wondering why a break-in process is necessary. Is it to do with the gradual introduction of moisture to the wood, getting the clarinet used to the climate, or some other reason?
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Author: maxopf
Date: 2015-02-18 10:46
I actually just posted in another thread about this. Really old or really new clarinets are not used to being subjected to moisture, and if moisture is introduced too suddenly, it can spread unevenly throughout the wood, causing tension and cracks. I recently had an old clarinet crack because it hadn't been played in years and the wood was dry. My repair tech's advice (just posted this same thing in the other thread):
"To best break in a clarinet it should be played no more than 20 minutes at a time-one or two times a day, not swabbed, then set on a clarinet stand so that the moisture can be absorbed into the wood. It sounds a little crazy but that's what I have learned works best to stabilize the wood so that it won't crack. The wood is just dry from non use.
The temperature may have contributed [to the crack] but I'm more certain that the dry wood is to blame."
Said repair technician plays a 100 year old bassoon and has repaired instruments up to 300 years old, so I trust his knowledge on wood break-in.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-02-18 17:50
The fear is that, for whatever reason, failure to break an instrument in properly can lead to cracking or distortion of the bore. If you ask several repair techs or instrument makers, you may get just as many subtly different explanations of why this should be true - many, as maxopf describes, centering around the gradual introduction of moisture, others around improving the wood's flexibility, its ability to tolerate expansion and contraction that result from normal increase and decrease in temperature during a playing session.
Most players observe a break-in procedure with new clarinets. Whether or not it's important is something no one wants to test with a brand new, expensive instrument. The manufacturers, I think unanimously, recommend it.
I've never seen a controlled study that tries to show a correlation between break-in and cracking. Maybe it's been done at the university level as a dissertation somewhere. If the manufacturers have done any studies demonstrating the danger of playing an instrument full time from the start, I would think they'd link the results to their websites in this modern digital age, but I haven't noticed anything of the sort.
If I bought a new clarinet, I would follow the standard advice about breaking in a new instrument because there's enough possible, theoretical basis for me not to want to take the chance. I do have a couple of old instruments (mid-20th century) that I don't play for months at a time, and I don't break them in each time I want to get them out to play them. If I did that, I'd never play them at all.
Karl
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Author: maxopf
Date: 2015-02-19 03:54
@ my last post: The repair technician got back to me - he suggests a week or slightly longer for an old clarinet.
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