Author: Kalashnikirby
Date: 2017-11-19 04:32
Matthew,
It would seem my current post encouraged you to do this writeup 
Now here's the other side of the story: I, too, have been a DIY person since I can renember. My earliest memory of this was taking apart an electric miniature-MP5-BB-gun, just because I felt I had to do it. I've done RC cars, planes, helis, later on bikes, nowadays it's smartphones and occasionally instruments; studying dentistry instead of any arts was not only an economical decision, but out of my wish to both study and learn an interesting handicraft, and my choice, I'd say 4 years later now was dead right.
What I had to learn over the course of the years was that there is a plethora of people, that is to say professionals, that I would never ever trust to take care of neither my teeth, nor my bike, having gained a certain proficiency with these topics.
When I try to discuss anything beyond the basics with some bike repair shop people, I get looks of incomprehension. I renemember once mentioning that I disassembled an old Fichtel&Sachs Gear Hub and aligned the gears. I was told that was impossible, as a certain gauge was required to align them in a 90° angle to the hub shell - they weren't actually kidding, I then understood, but believed it was necesarry to use a gauge, only available through a manufacturer to align a clearly visible mark on 3-4 gears in a 90° degree, when one could just use they eyes! But to be honest, they're one of the better shops and have probably managed to equip every single one of the 7000 residents in my home village with one of their bikes, which I commend them for, they're just not what I'm after.
A far worse example is the smartphone repair business - mostly because it doesn't require any sort of official training. Around 30% of the smartphones repaired by one of the bigger shops in town show severe mistakes or even damage to internal components, which is a totally inacceptable rate. None of them strive to use original parts, which is possible, but difficult.
At the recent concert, a co-player showed me a huge scratch that a rather well-known repairman put into her clarinet because he probably slipped with the screwdriver.
Dentists? Don't get me started. I was just recently offended in a most aggressive way by an assistant doctor because she wrongly diagnosed caries as an opening of the pulp chamber (in other words, it could've been BAD), uttering all kinds of threads, only to be proven wrong a few days later. One of the daily struggles in this study... but only 2 more years to go!
Now, what is the point of all this? With the aforementioned assistent doctor in mind, who does handle patients quite well, but fails on a technical level, not only in my case - what is MY guarantee that I get a better clarinet repair than I can do on my own? I don't know any good and affordable repair person, nor could anything I've seen so far persuade me, unless it cost a fortune. To be honest, my current post-experiement (not the one on the internet, but on a certain bass clarinet) goes a bit too far, but I yet have to ruin an instrument, so I'm sorry, but I'll keep going.
Also, I might have a somewhat unconventional approach sometimes, but there are some methods which I simply prefer over what is perhaps the standard, most notably that I don't use an alcohol torch, but an hot rework station, which has proven far superior over time and yes, I do have access to high quality torches. But can you for example use them to adjust a pad with the key mounted, provided you use a piece of thick aluminium foil as insulation? No, at least not as easily. Yet, most people (here in Germany) strictly oppose using anything other than an alcohol torch, because that's just what you use. Same with hot glue - if only they knew what Buffet and Schreiber put in their clarinets...
I hope this all doesn't sound like I'm offended by your post, I just wanted to point out why I'll hardly ever send my clarinet in for repair. There are many excellent repair people out there, but I could probably afford none of them right now.
Best regards,
Christian
Post Edited (2017-11-19 04:34)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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