That old horn smell - how to get rid of it

Ed

Ed

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I've found the following methods to have varying levels of success at getting rid of that old horn smell:

1) Charcoal in a pantyhose - Tried this as charcoal does a great job at eliminating odors from fish tanks. Works pretty well and charcoal is cheap

2) Baking Soda - Baking soda is corrosive so I generally don't like this choice. Putting a box of it in an empty case followed by vacuuming works well but sometimes the smells come back.

3) Fabreeze - I'm not sure what is in this stuff but it does seem to work for a bit. It requires the case to be resprayed periodically and then you are left with a Fabreeze smell which some may not like

4) Sunlight - Placing a case in the bright sun seems to do a lot for getting rid of some odors.

5) A new case - sometimes there's no rescuing an old case. Mold or mildew has gotten into the wood and no matter if you take the whole case apart and paint it with Kilz . . . eventually the smell will come back.
 
Here's the only way to get rid of the smell:

* Commercial-quality ozone generator (yes, there are some out there -- they're used for when there's been a fire, etc.). That's essentially what the "bright sunlight" is.
* Trash the case, swabs and reeds. Soak mouthpiece in mouthwash. Send your horn in to get disassembled, soaked in dip (i.e. a chemical cleaning solution) and then repadded, refelted and recorked. Get a new case.

Seriously.

I wrote up an article on this once -- I can't find it right now -- and I used a 1930-ish Pan American metal clarinet that had been stored in a basement as my test subject.

* Baking soda: didn't work.
* Activated charcoal: no worky.
* Ripping the felt out of the case and spraying everything down with vinegar: no worky.
* Coffee grounds: made the horn smell like old horn + coffee. Unappealing.
* Swabbing out the horn with rubbing alcohol and letting it sit outside the case: still musty.
 
I've heard that even people who have replated their silver clarinets still have that must old smell problem. I've had two silver clarinets replated, and use the old cases with no problems with smell. Both instruments are from the early 1900s. Maybe I just got lucky?
 
My backup tenor, a silver-plated Martin Handcraft, was the stinkiest horn that my repair tech in Halifax had ever seen (smelled ;) ) in over 40 years of horn repairs. It was so bad, you could smell it throughout our above-ground basement, despite it being in a closet with the case closed for weeks. The horn came from a friend's attic where it had been sitting in its closed case for nearly 30 years in a number of pieces.

The first thing my tech did when I left the horn with him for an overhaul/restoration is throw out the case. The next thing was to soak the horn (I forgot what he told me he used), then remove the pads since that was where a great deal of the smell was. As he tried to disassemble what was still together, he found that he couldn't get most of the rods out, so he had to soak the entire thing again in oil. Yuck...Finally, after he got all the pieces apart, he polished (and in some instances had to use a dremel tool) each piece to get the black off. Then and only then did the horn lose most of its smell.

This work was done in around 2000. To this day, despite it's new case, my hands still have a mild "old horn smell" after playing it, despite the horn no longer smelling bad.

OK folks...This conversation really stinks.... :D
 
I think Gandalfe's lucky.

I also inherited my grandfather's old clarinet, a wooden Lyric (I believe that's a Martin stencil). Musty.

Unfortunately, it got stolen (yah: a horn with literally NO street value, but a good deal of sentimental value got stolen). This, of course, did fix the smell problem, tho :).

The point is that anything that's not metal will retain the smell. (Metal only retains a smell if there's something smeared on it.) That means pads, corks, felts, reeds, cases, etc. I'd also think that, in Helen's case, there might be some ick under the pearls.

Helen, I was told by one repair guy that the solution he uses for cleaning -- which most people just call "dip" -- was Simple Green and water.
 
or lemon pine sol and water

i used to just take my sax body repairs that needed a heavy dosage of cleaning to another local repair place that had a chemical dipping barrel. If you leave those barrels open for too long it makes all your tools quickly rust within a 30 foot radius.

there is a permanent solution for wood clarinets that are badly musty ..... first take the keywork off and them throw it in the fireplace and enjoy the warm glow :D
or try a baking soda paste, warm soapy water, chemical based bore oil works good too to kill green stuff
 
My 1920's era Conn alto came "pre aged" when I bought it for $25 with the intention of making a lamp. Once I played a working one, I got mine rebuilt from the ground up, losing the gorgeous gold plating in the process but still ending up with a wonderful horn.

However, as pickled and stripped and replated as the horn was by the time it was done, it still retains small amounts of the "stink". Not in the rods and tubes (they are all clean), but in the most obscure of places, between the bottom of the bell and the "bump" strip soldered to the bell.

As for the case, burn it now rather than later. Even if you run it through a moving and storage company's ozone chamber for a few days, you'll never get it out. A new case is a lot better solution than trying to rid yourself of something that's just not going to go away.
 
SOTSDO said:
As for the case, burn it now rather than later. Even if you run it through a moving and storage company's ozone chamber for a few days, you'll never get it out. A new case is a lot better solution than trying to rid yourself of something that's just not going to go away.
Click to expand...

Most vintage cases I've seen really do not support the horn all that well anyway. The original design seems to have been inadequate to begin with. Mix that on top of 70 or 80 years of interior foam compression, and your horn is not that well protected at all. If you insist on keeping the original case and are somewhat of a handyman, you can refurbish the interior of the case. A buddy of mine did this actually. He took out the interior of an old Selmer Vanguard tenor case (the version that carries a flute and clarinet as well) and rebuilt it using styrofoam blocks and material from a fabric store. He rebuilt the case so that his Super 20 tenor would fit inside of it. You should be able to scrub the smell out of the wooden case by doing this as well.
 
I've used Febreeze with success. You do have to use it heavily,but it has done wonders for me. The only thing that concerns me is what it will do to the finish over an extended period.
 
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