Welcome to Gaia! ::

Okay, so for band today, my bd decided he was going to have a woodwind repairman come in and tell us how to do minor repairs on oru own instruments. Of course, it was only us woodwinds. He had us look at our isntruments and told us how to know if somethign was wrong, loose, off, or broken. By the end, we were all nauseas since this was the first time any of us had ever been told how to look at our isntruments, and we all had something wrong.

-All of us clarinets had leaks on our E/B key. Mine is so bad, you can see underneath the pad straight to the other side of it(I almost cried when I realized this. my precious Claribelle has a leak!). Another girl realized one of her pads was cracked(As well as the same key had a leak).
-Our dm, who plays sax, didn't know that his neck could get dirty, and apparently it was filthy and loose.
-My flute friend found out that his flute is full of leaks. (he said it totally expains why his D didn't playXD)
-We did a suction test on our clarinets. I failed pretty badly, though when I tried again later it worked, so I think i wasn't covering the holes right.
-My sl found out that her clarinet is crap and the guy didn't know how she could play it, seeing as every single one of her spings wasn't even touching the instruemtn0.o I don't even know how she cold play!

He told us how to fix our leaks, but he only fixed the cracked-pad girl's leak for her, and even then not perfectly. He ran out of time before he could. Unfortunately, i tried this and it still didn't work. I did find a sticky key(which i cleaned and it wasn't sticy anymore.) And a loose screw which just happens to be by the leaking key. But if that doesn't fix it, I don't know what will.

So, anyone else had this happen? have you ever not checked on your isntrument for a while and then found a lot wrong? Anyone have a way to fix my E/B leak(When holding up the clarinet, it is one of the two keys pressed down at the bottom of the instrument. It is the top one that leaks. The lower one is fine.)

Well, have looked at it, but for some reason I skipped over that particular key(and probably a few others).

It isn't necesarilly the pad, but the actual key. It isn't going down all the way. If you look at it when the E/B key is pressed, it is quite a ways higher then the other, when they should be equal. Kind of like the key is bent. According to the repairman, it is one of the most common problems on a clarinet(which is why we all ahd the same problem.) It doesn't affect actually playing the note, other then some heitation, but it does make the sound more airy.

I'm just happy I know why my clarinet wouldn't play B as quickly as I pressed my key, like it would take a moment of hesitation to actually play the note even though my fingers would already be down.

I'm constantly messing with keys on my instruments (not like taking them off or anything, just pressing them down). It shows what keys affect other keys, what things should look like so I can tell when something's wrong (like, the way a spring is supposed to be, or something), etc. I don't know how to really fix big stuff and replace pads well yet, but knowing what's wrong with it can really help. =D

m, do you think i dhould take my crap clarinet(Her name is shelly) apart and try and put it together again? I agree that it would probably be very helpful for me to do so, but would you recommend it? I have a general idea of how they work, like what keys affect what keys and I do have two other clarinets for reference if I can't get it together again. But after a couple times it would make it easier to clean my instrument, and I could clean places I couldn't clean without taking it apart.
What kinds of tools would I need to do this, by the way?

Oh, and I got my clarinet fixed, though it probably wouldn't hurt to take it to a shop and have it looked at professionally and fixed up. I found a few places that might need some work that I wouldn't be able to fix myself.

The reepairman that came to visit is nice though. he has offered to fix any of our school instruments for free, and has left us business cards and will give all of us from our school discounts, cheap or free repairs, depending on the problem(obviously, expensive to fix problems will cost something, but it would be cheaper then it would be at a music store.) And I'm talking abotu the guy who fixes instruemnts for the Tucson symphony(a big symphony in our town, who are amzing. my grandpa used to be in it before he died.)