 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Diana
Date: 1999-06-19 22:46
Hi- I just returned from and band camp where the stage is an iceburg and caused a crack in my Buffet Festival. The university is luckly paying for the damage but I'm afraid that it will never play the same again! What to do?!?!!
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Author: Daniel
Date: 1999-06-19 23:22
If you have had the horn less than a year, you should be able to get Buffet to make another upper joint for you. A friend of mine had three R-13 upper joints beause they all kept cracking. He finally gave up on the third joint and it has two 6-8 pin cracks.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-06-19 23:25
2 things:
1) Get the crack pinned or glued by a competent tech if possible or
2) Replace the cracked joint if the crack goes all the way into the bore..
My son's Bb Festival cracked about a year after he had it. We drove to Chicago to have Francois Kloc of Buffet replace the joint. After the replacement and a bit of tweaking by Francois, it was <b>better</b> than new (and was luckily covered by the Buffet 1 year crack warrantee).
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Author: Diana
Date: 1999-06-19 23:54
Thanx for your advice...i know it's going to need about 5 or 6 pins...my parents have offered to buy an entire new horn if the crack will effect the playing and tone that much. Is this REALLY necessary? How well will it play? By the way, Daniel how old are you? I know someone by that name...just checking.
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Author: Dee
Date: 1999-06-20 04:26
Of course if your instrument is still under warranty, you should take advantage of that. However pinning is certainly a very good solution. If the pinning is competently done, you should not be able to tell the difference. I play a 45 year old (or so) professional Leblanc clarinet that had cracked and been pinned before it came into my possession in the 1960s. This is my primary clarinet and people tell me it sounds wonderful. It also feels wonderful to play, which is why I bought it in high school even though it had been pinned. I played it and fell in love with it.
However the cold stage could not have been cold enough to crack the instrument. Out of curiosity one day, I calculated the stresses due to differential thermal expansion of the wood due to hot breath inside and cold air outside on a freezing day and the stress is less than 1/10 of what it would take to crack the wood. There need to be other factors involved although as yet no one has determined just what these are. The cold simply seems to be the "straw that breaks the camel's back." Perhaps the dryness of cold air contributes, perhaps the wood isn't seasoned well enough, perhaps there was an undetected flaw in the wood, or maybe there were pre-existing stresses as a result of the manufacturing process.
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Author: mandy
Date: 1999-06-20 15:23
i have a Yamaha, and about 10 months after i bought it, it cracked in 3 places in the upper joint. needless to say, i freaked. i had a Selmer Signet before that, which had been used for marching band and that went through 0 degree weather as well as 100 degree weather and it never cracked. as for the Yamaha, they pinned the one crack (it took 8 pins). i too was afraid that it would change the sound. but even before they were pinned, it didn't change, and after that one was pinned, it didn't change. now, i don't know if your cracks are the whole way thru, that may change what i've said because mine were not. in the end, they realized that too many pins would be needed to pin the others, so they just gave me a new joint. good luck!
>Thanx for your advice...i know it's going to need about 5 >or 6 pins...my parents have offered to buy an entire new >horn if the crack will effect the playing and tone that >much. Is this REALLY necessary? How well will it play? By >the way, Daniel how old are you? I know someone by that >name...just checking.
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