Author: bmcgar ★2017
Date: 2017-01-24 07:24
Bookron, one big difference is that the wood used by in stringed instruments is much thinner, and as you point out, there are many "attached" components to stringed instruments made from different woods, metals, and sometimes synthetics. Therefore, adhesives and other joining methods are things that luthiers need to deal with, but not clarinet makers (by and large), and I'm guessing that that's what the advocacy of humidifiers comes from.
Most types of stringed instrument have many parts, and with grain running in different directions, such as the sides vs. the top and bottom of violins. Each part has to be able to expand and contract without compromising the integrity of the whole structure, and I suspect that this structural integrity is more dependent on the various forces working on the parts as they are adhered to the rest of the instrument and as they interact in the instrument rather than on the moisture content of each.
I admit that my own opinion on humidifying clarinets has been extrapolated from my experience as a woodworker, and that I've never seen an instrument crack for reasons that I could definitely attribute to moisture "shock" -- though I have seen clarinets crack from temperature shock. But I certainly don't know squat about stringed instruments, so bear with my guess.
Anyway, for clarinets, the first question is, "does it do harm?" I think it might, and I avoid it.
The second question is, "does it do any good?" I'm not convinced that it does.
Anecdotally, of all the accomplished clarinetists and pros I've known in my nearly 60 years of playing, I've only known one who humidifies (with orange peel), and he does that to keep his skin pads from shrinking and coming loose, not to avoid cracking.
B.
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
