Author: Dutchy
Date: 2006-11-03 16:51
Neither--it's the common 3% household peroxide that you can buy over-the-counter at any drugstore or grocery store here in the U.S. They sell it for gargling and pouring onto infected wounds, things like that. It costs about a dollar for a 16 oz. bottle. I just put a half-inch of it into a film canister soaking container, same as I would for water, and soak the reed for a few minutes, then rinse it out under running water, letting a thin stream of water go through the reed to rinse out the gunk inside there, too, not just around the outside. And as I said, it's not a miracle worker, but it does seem to perk up for a day or so those marginal "oh, no, this reed is losing it" reeds, the ones that are losing it because they're full of gunk.
Two other things I've discovered I can do to prolong my reeds is rinse my mouth out before I play, to get rid of food residue, because your saliva is full of enzymes anyway that are slowly breaking down the reed fibers, but food particles in addition are full of fats and sugars and stuff, which can't be good for the wood.
Then I discovered that I need to stop banging the reed tip on the bottom of the water soaker canister every time I dip it. I used to tap the reed on the bottom every time I reached over to dip it, and I finally realized that that's not good for the measured-in-micrometers-carefully-adjusted reed's tip either. So now I just slowly and very-very carefully dip the reed in the water without touching the bottom, which seems to help.
And I left out that I also realized that if you leave the same water in your film canister for soaking, it gets contaminated with saliva which then adds even more digestive enzymes to your soaking water--and thus to your reed- every time you dip your reed. Which is a Bad Thing. It's the same way that you don't feed a baby directly from the baby food jar, because if you do, the saliva from the spoon will contaminate the food in the jar, and if you put the half-finished jar of baby food back into the fridge, and come back to it the next day, it will be a disgusting liquid mess, the salivary enzymes having done their job there in the fridge.
So I use fresh water in my little film canister every time, which is a nuisance trekking back and forth to the bathroom for a half-inch of water, but hey, anything to avoid having to pay another 12 bucks for another reed any time soon.
Post Edited (2006-11-03 16:56)
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
