West Music Staff Blogs

In the final part of the this 5 part series, Peter Hart, a resident repair specialist at West Music in Marion, finishes with more tips and tricks for maintaining your clarinet and keeping it ready to play:

• Every student needs a maintenance care kit.
• Performers should NEVER eat or drink anything while playing (except water, of course). Many people also brush their teeth or at least rinse their mouths with water immediately before playing. These are excellent preventative measures, which can go a long way toward keeping away those scary UFO’s (Unidentified Food Objects).
• Assembly: Make sure that the tenons are properly greased. Place left hand fingers depressing upper stack key mechanism, thus lifting the 1/1 B flat bridge key. The left hand thumb should be between the register and trill keys. The left hand with the upper joint should rotate clock-wise. The lower joint is held with the right hand. Close the E/B/ and C keys with the right hand fingers and rotate counter-clock-wise. If the instrument is assembled correctly the keys will not be bent and the instrument will stay out of the shop.
• The most important part of maintaining your clarinet is to remove the water that collects on the inside of the bore. The best way to remove water is to pull a weighted cleaning rag through each joint individually and then wife the inside of the tenons. This should be done after each time you play. Pad saver swabs are not recommended because they trap moisture in the bore, causing cracks and rotten wood, ruining your instrument.
• To keep the wood from drying out too much, woodwind bore oil applied to the cleaning rag in small doses will oil the wood. If you prefer not to use this method, the wood should be oiled once per month, both inside and out. This is especially important in the winter. If the upper joint wood color appears gray the instrument should be soaked in oil by a repair technician. Grayness indicates rotting has occurred and the wood is too dry.
• Extreme temperature and humidity changes are very hard on wood clarinets. For this reason, wood clarinets should not be used in marching band. Plastic clarinets are recommended for marching outdoors.
• To avoid bent keys, do not store books or music inside the case.
• Chipped mouthpieces should be replaced. Recommended replacement mouthpieces include: Fobes Debut, Vandoren B45, and Vandoren 5RV. Many stock or instrument brand mouthpieces that come with instruments may be more difficult to play and should be replaced.
• A minimum of a yearly service/repair shop visit is a must.