Along with the renting and the sale of Clarinettes Buffet Crampon, Le Coin des Bois offers a service of clarinet and wind instrument repairs:
- Clarinets,
- Oboes,
- Bassoons,
- Flutes,
- Saxophones.
Wooden clarinet maintenance as well as wind instruments
One question comes up regularly. What does the clarinette service consist in ?
This very term of service is pretty wide and lets us deal with may things. For a professional technician, it does not only mean the checking of the mechanics and/or the suppression of the issues encountered.
At Le Coin des Bois, we make the difference between ‘checking or fixing’ and
‘overall checking’.
The name says it all : it consists in making a general and acute review of the instrument and hence proceed to a thorough cleaning before anything else is done. Only then can the musician have a better approach of the issue, which will eventually enable him to make adjustments or repairs, the instruments being all different.
Those issues may rank from a simple missing spring , torn corks, pierced pads or a worn out tenon cork or even a bad watertightness on the thumb , including the discovery of a crack underneath the keywork.
Three different types of overall checking.
The general checking
It is done on a well-maintained instrument at a workshop , provided the cleanliness and the outside aspect are not over degraded.
This step might reveal a few problems here and there regarding the level of either the mechanism or the protection.
Ideally, it has to be done every year or eventually every two years.
The repading
A regular compulsory stage for the instruments which have seldom been thoroughly checked over the past few years and which pads are dangerously coming to an end.Generally speaking, a very bad state of the tenon corks or an obvious dirtiness can also be noticed. We hence proceed to the dismantling and the full cleaning of the instrument along with the change of the whole leather and cork padding.
The repairing
The repairing :
- It is essential and is a first step for the instruments which have not been checked for a long while. It will make them as good as new.
- Oiling and polishing of the wood.
- Removal of the whole fitting ( felts, corks, pads, springs and tenon corks) from the keywork and the joints.
- Polishing and cleaning of the keywork , final restoration to its right length and fitting in its right place thanks to a blank set.
- Resilvering of the keys that might have been ruined by some corrosions due to their old age or to sweaty hands.
- Laying down of a new fitting with genuine materials ( leather, cork, lightweight either trimmed or tannered).
- Final assembling with filling-up .
- Your instrument will look brand new and you will find the long-gone comfort of playing back. !
Advice #1
The more regular the visits to the workshop, the less expensive the caring of your instrument !
Advice # 2
A check-up once a year or a general checking every two-years are much more predictable and sensible in an annual budget.
°Please do not use your stand as a storage place instrument. It is only meant for pausing or laying-down.
Advice # 3
Whenever you decide to stop working on your instrument for the day, it is advised to use the brush twice before systematically putting it back into its case .The instrument will age better and you will avoid a premature damage.
REPAIRING OF CLARINETTES AND WIND-INSTRUMENTS
Repairing is a genuine work of imagination based on the experience of technique.
Everything is prone to break or burst. Each time it becomes matter of imagining the least invasive and the most efficient way to solve the problem. Beyond the missing splinter of wood or of a piece to be rewelded, the technician may sometimes have to take up a true challenge.
After a fall , you may have to rebuild the whole part of a body which includes a post for one or several keys:
- How, According to the location, to pull out an axis which thread is broken inside a bowl ?
- How to strengthen up a strengthened key ?
ADVANTAGES OF HAVING YOUR CLARINETTE REPAIRED AT OUR WORKSHOP
- We work on estimates.
- Short time repairs.
- Facilities of payments for the heaviest interventions.