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RE: I need some advise.

Author: Lelia
Date: 1999-07-01 15:35

I think the recommendations to buy a better mouthpiece first and later think about a used professional clarinet are good advice. You've been playing long enough now to be able to look at a used clarinet and see whether there's anything seriously the matter with it, such as a crack. One way to start is by inspecting your current clarinet carefully to see what a clarinet in good working order looks like. That may sound kind of silly, but I realized when I started shopping for a better clarinet that I just took my old one for granted, and hadn't really inspected it in detail in a long time. I cleaned it and took care fo it, but "looked without seeing," as Sherlock Holmes said to Dr. Watson. If I hadn't made a point of going over it one key at a time, seeing what connects with what, etc., I might have failed to notice serious problems(expensive to fix!) on some of the used instruments I looked at in flea markets and "junktiques" shops. Often the good instruments that show up in places other than music stores are in unplayable condition (sometimes you can get a bargain that way if you figure the cost of an overhaul into the "real" price of the clarinet), but even if you can see that the corks and pads are shot, do hold the clarinet in playing position without the mouthpiece and "play" a chromatic scale all the way up and down the keys, to make sure they're all there and they all work, or would work with a minor fix such as replacement of a screw.

Goo luck!

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