 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: yaseungkim
Date: 2015-02-15 08:44
Would you go back to your new clarinet "break in" routine if your wooden clarinet hasn't been played for a week?
If the answer is yes, how long would you be playing it like a new clarinet. ...
Would you treat it like a brand new or would this be treated differently.
Post Edited (2015-02-15 08:46)
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2015-02-15 08:57
No. Just pick it up and play it. The only precaution I would take is to ensure that it is approximately at room temperature.
Tony F.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-02-15 12:24
Only a week? I have a couple of auxiliary clarinets and a spare Bb that don't get played for months and I just get them out and play them when I need to. I often go a week without needing to use my A clarinet.
Karl
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Author: yaseungkim
Date: 2015-02-15 19:09
I just don't want the thing to crack on me.... want to take all the necessary cautions is all.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2015-02-15 20:01
As an amateur doubling on . . . er, several . . . instruments, no, I don't go through the whole break-in routine with a wooden clarinet that's only been sitting around unplayed for a week or two.
But today I do plan to take some special precautions, because the temperature plunged suddenly last night, from 41 degrees F at 6 p.m. to 11 degrees F at 6 this morning. Since we turn the thermostat down at night, my house also got colder and drier than normal indoors. I plan to practice a sax instead of a clarinet today just to be on the safe side, and if I had to play a wooden clarinet today, I'd warm up more gradually and gently than usual to avoid shocking the wood.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-02-15 21:48
I think we've addressed O.P. yaseungkim's original concern that not much goes into the preparation for clarinet play that's different, depending upon whether a day or a week without play has gone by, provided of course in neither scenario, "Indiana Jones hasn't used the clarinet as a substitiute for his whip" while we took a break.
(And I trust we can get past the tongue in cheek quip of "what do you MEAN you haven't played in a week?")
That said, the idea of breaking in a (new) clarinet made me stop and think.
I mean surely, "breaking in reeds" is probably a topic so prolific here that our moderator might have needed to buy additional disk storage just to retain all of it. But breaking in a clarinet...hmm.
I'm drawn to the automotive paradigm of not traveling over 50 mph for the first X number of miles, or getting the oil changed initially after an unusually small number of miles, but the only parallels I find between cars and clarinets are in checking all the product's features, to make sure they work, and are adjusted correctly, while warrantys still apply.
I don't mean to hijack a post, but with its initial premise resolved, what exactly does one, or should one do when first acquiring a new clarinet, other than maybe the obvious of making sure keys and pads are adjusted correctly and to our liking, checking basic intonation, and otherwise taking the instrument through a test run of our repertoire?
Is, for example, bore oil, like motor oil something we should find ourselves paying attention to for the first 50,000 miles...err sonatas?
What IS the break in checklist, if one exists, anyway?
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Author: yaseungkim
Date: 2015-02-15 23:33
My son's Buffet was turned in for tarnished keys for a week. The guy we bought it from will get me the estimate to have it replaced as the key plating will not be covered under the manufacturer warranty. Since I have a quote from another guy in Maryland, whoever gets me the quickest turnaround estimate will be the preferred tech to do the work. They are both buffet authorized tech, if that means anything.
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-02-16 00:36
On word on plating: a subject I have only experience with, not expertise.
My local techs, all in Buffet shops, invariably turf out this [electro]plating process to a subcontractor.
One told me that given all the EPA regulations (read cost) associated with him running the machinery, including I believe the need for some highly toxic materials (I wan't to say arsenic) to catalyze the process, made it just too expensive for him to run the equipment, given the relative infrequency of plating jobs he did.
I don't know if this is the case with your Maryland contact, but it was suggested to me (about a decade ago) that I seek out instrument electroplaters in the US' "ground zero" if you will of that trade, Elkhart, Indiana, and former (sadly) Selmer employers.
Long story short, let me provide you with a contact who did great work for me, but that I am entirely inaffiliated with.
weissinstrumentrepair.com
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Author: maxopf
Date: 2015-02-16 00:54
I doubt an instrument needs breaking in after just a week. If it's been years, though, that's a different story.
A while back, a family friend gave me an old Buffet clarinet from 1946 as a gift from her mother who didn't play anymore. I recently got it overhauled by my repair technician and, stupidly, went straight to playing it without taking much time to break it in. When it developed some minor cracks in the upper joint soon afterwards, he glued the cracks, oiled the bore, and just yesterday gave me this advice:
"To best break in a clarinet it should be played no more than 20 minutes at a time-one or two times a day, not swabbed, then set on a clarinet stand so that the moisture can be absorbed into the wood. It sounds a little crazy but that's what I have learned works best to stabilize the wood so that it won't crack. The wood is just dry from non use.
The temperature may have contributed [to the instrument cracking] but I'm more certain that the dry wood is to blame."
He hasn't specified how many days/weeks I should do this process for - I will add this information when he emails me back. He plays a 100-year-old bassoon and has repaired a lot of old instruments (up to 300 years old), so I trust his advice on breaking in old instruments.
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