Sounds like you fit into the category that most people are in
You mean I'm not a hypochondriac? Good to know.
What kind of hypochondriac are you?
- Thread starter Groovekiller
- Start date
You mean I'm not a hypochondriac? Good to know.
Yeah that's the rub. I can quit my day gig so I can practice my a$$ off all day until I get to a really good "pro level". But, my sax will not last that long nor could I afford to fix it.
Oh well, maybe the stock market will come back and I'll be able to retire one day. Maybe that's wishful thinking too ;-)
I had a long-term problem with my main bass clarinet, in that the fork B on the lower joint was always muffled. I compensated by playing it the sliver key way ,and would bring it up whenever the horn was in for service, but no one (out of about ten different repair people, including several who handled repairs for symphonic players in Saint Louis and Houston, could figure out what the problem was.
Only when I took it to a bassoon shop up in Dallas was the cause discovered. The pad on the first finger, RH had at some point in the past been cut through the leather covering. It was a very clean cut, and the rest of the pad was so stressed that the leather flap was normally held up against the felt beneath the leather covering.
Only when the pad was open and some of the airstream was thus diverted from the tonehole did the flap get drawn down, thus muffling the tone. Very irritating, but also relatively hard to detect.
I examined the pad the best that I could with the tools at my disposal, but never disassembled the horn. Others did the feeler gauge trick, and one ran a bore scope (with a right angle head) down the bore to take a look, but the leather was so tight against the pad that it eluded him as well.
So, what are you going to do? Only the last repairperson pulled the key off of the horn, whereupon the fault became apparent. Others all looked at it (as did I), but saw nothing from the outside. Some of these may have felt that I was imagining it, and perhaps the tone quality was not as apparent at a distance as it was up close. But, it was real and it eluded more than a couple of professional repair folks. Go figure...
Only when I took it to a bassoon shop up in Dallas was the cause discovered. The pad on the first finger, RH had at some point in the past been cut through the leather covering. It was a very clean cut, and the rest of the pad was so stressed that the leather flap was normally held up against the felt beneath the leather covering.
Only when the pad was open and some of the airstream was thus diverted from the tonehole did the flap get drawn down, thus muffling the tone. Very irritating, but also relatively hard to detect.
I examined the pad the best that I could with the tools at my disposal, but never disassembled the horn. Others did the feeler gauge trick, and one ran a bore scope (with a right angle head) down the bore to take a look, but the leather was so tight against the pad that it eluded him as well.
So, what are you going to do? Only the last repairperson pulled the key off of the horn, whereupon the fault became apparent. Others all looked at it (as did I), but saw nothing from the outside. Some of these may have felt that I was imagining it, and perhaps the tone quality was not as apparent at a distance as it was up close. But, it was real and it eluded more than a couple of professional repair folks. Go figure...
Reminds me of our noisy central heating, countless engineers came and checked the water pump and whatnot. No cure. Until I called the the thermostat mfgr and asked if it could have something to do with the valves (one per radiator). Sure, if the wrong type is built in, was the answer. We summoned another engineer (the first one who actually went to his knees to inspect the valve) and presto! within fifteen minutes the problem was solved.
Sometimes you have to get your hands and knees dirty and get a wrench or a screwdriver, just looking doesn't always help...