Author: caledonius
Date: 2008-05-30 05:23
I have what may be more of an existential than a practical question about the soon-to-be-decided fate of my high school Yamaha clarinet. I have many fond memories of my YCL-34, my first wooden horn that I (read:my parents) purchased new in 1991. It subsequently passed to my younger brother, also a clarinetist, as I moved on to a Buffet R13 in 1996.
My brother was reasonably careful and accomplished with it, but he quit playing after college, and it has sat untouched since 2003. He graciously agreed to give it back to me as a backup horn while I get my R13 an overdue overhaul, and it arrived by UPS ground today.
It's a total wreck...all of the skin pads in the upper joint are in various degrees of deterioration (to the point that the case is littered with pulverized pad remains). The pivot screws are all corroded; some look badly stripped. Worst of all, the nickel plating has worn off down to a coppery-looking interior on the register key, A, G#, C#, Eb, left hand B/E keys and even along a significant portion of the bell ring. The state of the remaining keywork is hideous: whitish discoloration with little bits of green coppery corrosion poking through on all the tone hole rings, rods, and even the barrel and middle joint rings.
Obviously, the clarinet is totally unplayable in this condition and will need to be wholly repadded with some work to the action to set it aright from a playing standpoint. Cosmetically, however, it will remain unacceptable to onlookers, and I worry that further deterioration of the nickel-plate-less keys will threaten the clarinet's playing integrity further if all I attend to are its padding issues.
My queston is this: is a YCL-34 worth the expense of restoring it to its original condition? My assumptions have been thus far that a re-pad would be ~$100-150, but a major overhaul with attention to buffing +/- replating the keys could run me more than the value of the clarinet. My inclination is to let it die based on these assumptions, as I don't attach much sentimental value to this instrument. On the other hand, I do have fond memories of how this thing played, albeit in times when I was a far less discerning player.
If your relative shipped you this thing, what would you advise?
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The Clarinet BBoard
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