Bass clarinet pad leads

mmatisoff

mmatisoff

I own a used Vito Reso-tone bass clarinet. I've taken it to two different repair techs. The first tech said he repaired the bent keys and leaking pads. Unfortunately, the poor guy didn't do it right, so I had to bring it back to him. He still didn't know how to fix bent keys and didn't see that some of the pad were leaking.

Tech two is a clarinet specialist. He plays clarinets and repairs them. He found several leaky pads and bent keys (I was there when he found them). He said he replaced a bank of bent keys, fixed all of the leaks, and adjusted the two register key timing.

The bass clarinet still has leaks (when I place a single piece of drying paper under the all the keys the pads are fine; however, several pad still leak. The Eb pad, second register key, and most of the trill keys (RH) and spatula keys (LH) still leak. The first register key is still problematic.

Bottom line. Is it possible for me to fix the leaky pads myself? If yes, where can I find instructions for doing so?
 
You may want to check out Music Medic. Curt is a good guy and there are a lot of repair articles on his site. He can also sell you the proper pads. Having said that, replacing pads is not always a simple process. Floating the pad in with shellac and getting it perfectly lined up is something that takes practice.

Another thing to check is to make sure the tone holes are not dirty or damaged. My low Eb would absolutely not play. When the tech took it apart, there was a chunk missing on the side of the tone hole. He had to build it up with epoxy. Works fine now.
 
Bass clarinets can be so hard to adjust. I had a used one worked and reworked but it never spoke well. Finally bit the bullet and bought a Selmer Privilege that had been used at NAMM shows for a year. So expensive, but plays from top to bottom with nary a squeak or squawk! Not everyone can do that but I'm just sayin' ... I needed it for a theater pit job or two.

logo.jpg
 
I am so spoiled. I didn't realize that bass clarinets were hard to work on. My old timer works great. Has from the day I got it. It is a rebuild that my tech did from 2 of the same brand. (Vintage German basses circa 1950s.) All my horns work great as a matter of fact. That's the advantage of having someone trained in Europe as a woodwind instrument maker do the maintenance your horns.
 
Bass clarinets are a bit notorious for having misadjustment issues , even new right out of the box . An ordinary Bb or A clarinet has two valves that must close in perfect unison and this causes what is probably the most common misadjustment issue . A bass clarinet has, I believe ,three double closings and five triple closings so about ten times more grief right there ( probably more if they go down to 'C' )Finding a luthier that's really meticulous enough can be beyond the reach of a lot of people ,so ( and this may sound odd ) I believe that the more one can become the GP. of ones own instrument the better . Nobody is likely to care about the playability of your instrument quite like you after all . Apart from things like fitting and floating new pads ( and quite a lot of wind instrument musicians will set their hand to that too !) pretty much all else comes down to the correct thickness of little cork damper-spacers and a bit of judicious micro- bending . It's really not rocket science and because all the mechanical workings are highly visible , studying and understanding how all that works can bring you pretty quickly to a position of being able to divine why they don't . Anatomy- Function - Diagnosis- Remedy . Start with the first and you'll be up to doing a lot of the last in no time .
When that tiny shim of cork falls off your bridge link ,you'll quickly see what the problem is and not be leaving your horn at the luthier's for a week till they get round to fixing it ,or letting some band member bend the link claiming that that's what it needs . You will know that you need a little piece of decent quality cork , which you can get uncorking a decent quality bottle of wine . So the whole problem just turns into a pleasant evening of giving your beloved instrument the T.L.C. It deserves over a nice glass of red .
As for having to do a little bending , watch a qualified luthier do this to your instrument and you will realize it's not a china doll . I won't say that you can't break your instrument doing this ,but it's not that easy to .
The most common dilemma in adjusting a horn I find , is should you be bending or should you be looking to the cork damper- spacers . Sometimes it's self evident , but not if you get the instrument already out of adjustment . It's hard to know what to say about that, except that you should re-analyze your adjustment method if it's going to leave you're lever keys funny heights , create a knock-on misadjustment issue or result in valves opening notably less than before .
The worst you can do is get into a mess with the adjustment and have to take your horn to a luthier after all , but the chances are, that will be one trip where once you would have made four , or quite probable just put up with misadjustment issues a lot of time .
I believe that of all the best adjusted instruments out there in the world , most of them are kept that way by the musicians themselves .
 
I imagine so ,but I'm really only comparing my wife's soprano clarinets with her 'Bundy Selmer bass . She has a Sax stashed away somewhere so now you mention it ,I'de like to dig it out and take a look .

I think it should be no surprise however , that any horn that requires you to hermetically seal a chain of large valves in perfect unison using your little finger ,is bound to demand a VERY high degree of precision adjustment in every detail . Your mechanical advantage just doesn't have much wiggle room . To get a pad that's been mediocrely seated to close for sure , you'll have to " rob Jack to pay Gill " in the sharing out of the seating pressure between the other closing pads and quickly it all starts become a matter of a hope and a prayer that your notes don't come out stuffy .

When my wife gets tired she'll frequently start using both her left and right hand little fingers on both the levers at once !
 
I'm guessing that that is only because you were shy to take on adjustments yourself . I think that most people tend to feel that they don't have the necessary skill-set . But really it's just about making a studied diagnosis of the problem and then patient a perfectionist minded fiddling . Luthiers may be quicker on the first , but not always sufficiently dedicated to the latter ....or so it would seem from a lot of people's remarks. Hence my suggestion that " If you want something done right ...Do it yourself !" , may be the best approach for a lot of people with this instrument . Also you can arrive at a point were your instrument is always playing well , rather than enduring periods of misadjustment issues and the expense and hassle of getting them fixed. .

If you prefer , you can fix you instrument over a glass of white wine ..... It doesn't have to be red .
 
Who me?

Exactly the opposite. I tend to dig in before reading directions and look at references as needed. Sometimes I end up doing something bad (like bricking the BIOS of my media server a few weeks back...). I doubt someone 'shy' about mechanicals would dive into a trash project like that Noblet bass in the first place.

For me, I work on mostly saxophones and simply have a lot of other on-and-off interests I cycle through. Also, there is the matter of time, money, commitment, and a realization that when I started it I was over my head and needed to do more research. This is why that project is only now coming to a close as I figure my way though using feelers instead of light to detect leaks.
 
talk about "bricking" stuff.
The register mechanism, especially the body octave vent on sax, alto and bass clarinets can make some significant tonal changes in the instrument.
Many instruments that seem "tame" and "classical - like" can be made more "powerful" and "monster" like simply by slightly expanding that body register vent. BUT, if one makes it a little bit too large then it can "brick" the horn and it becomes totally unresponsive.

Leak lights are good for brass instruments where the light can bounce around.
Leak lights are not used for wood instruments though. Thus the use of feelers. Of course, you can use feelers successfully for saxes too.
 
After going to a tech, I almost always find something that needs adjustment. The individual pads usually seat well. But one of the fingerings that closes 2 or more pads needs more regulation. You need to keep going back and checking them since some adjustments can throw out other ones. Sometimes spring tensions are a bit stiff or loose.

I avoid adjusting pad seats unless there are paper shims like in flutes or Leblanc Contra clarinets. But I have a good supply of cork, felt, leather, Teflon, etc, to regulate mechanisms and reduce noise. If you have the aptitude, this is a lot more convenient and enjoyable than visits to a shop.
 
Last edited:
Steve said:
Leak lights are not used for wood instruments though. Thus the use of feelers. Of course, you can use feelers successfully for saxes too.
Click to expand...
I use an LED leak light from MusicMedic
plus
a length of "tinsel" (from a Christmas tree) to check for leaks.
The tinsel works really well on my clarinets, flute, & picc.
Put a 1" piece of tinsel on an alligator clip and feel around the whole pad (insert/close the pad/and slowly look for resistance when withdrawing as you go around the pad)
 
Some interesting snippets of information . Tinsel sounds like the perfect material for testing pad seating !

Although I did manage to successfully make the half dozen adjustments to get my wife's Bundy playing properly ( I think !) I would have appreciated finding something on YouTube offering some guidelines and tips . Adjusting a key so it closes properly is one thing , but choosing the right method so that it and other keys open properly is less self evident . On a second hand instrument you don't know what's been done to it so unless you have an experienced eye you can jump to a wrong diagnosis and faulty remedy .
I repair old clocks as a part time thing and the biggest problems are ALWAYS down to the fact that somebody has fooled around with the movement so you have to figure out how it's supposed to be .

Steve , if you cared to do some clarinet videos along those lines , I'm sure I would not be the only one out there to appreciating them .

I checked out your videos and realized I'd seen them already . I liked them very much and look forward to you doing some more .
 
Skywalker said:
Some interesting snippets of information . Tinsel sounds like the perfect material for testing pad seating !

Although I did manage to successfully make the half dozen adjustments to get my wife's Bundy playing properly ( I think !) I would have appreciated finding something on YouTube offering some guidelines and tips . Adjusting a key so it closes properly is one thing , but choosing the right method so that it and other keys open properly is less self evident . On a second hand instrument you don't know what's been done to it so unless you have an experienced eye you can jump to a wrong diagnosis and faulty remedy .
I repair old clocks as a part time thing and the biggest problems are ALWAYS down to the fact that somebody has fooled around with the movement so you have to figure out how it's supposed to be .

Steve , if you cared to do some clarinet videos along those lines , I'm sure I would not be the only one out there to appreciating them .

I checked out your videos and realized I'd seen them already . I liked them very much and look forward to you doing some more .
Click to expand...
I have a series of refurbishing / repadding a clarinet. But I have not gotten to the repadding, recorking, etc videos yet, much less the regulation.

I also decided not to make any videos of fixing broken pocket watches.
If you look in the background you'll see a large Longines mantel clock. :)

The hardest part is I've had to evolve my recording of the video and audio * a lot*. with Audio being separate and now I merge together a ton of various sections. It makes the video a lot better in a sense of clarity, etc but a major pain and time consuming now.
 
Yes !..I see that your workshop looks a bit like mine Steve ! People come in and ask me what exactly it is that I do . I tell them that I haven't really made up my mind about that yet . ( Well I'm only 56 ! )

Repadding definitly seems like one of those things that requires experience to really get right . Personally I would try that first on an instrument that didn't matter much like an old student soprano .
Regulation I see as being generally more streightforward however , so something most people could probably successfully do themselves . I'm obviously speaking as somebody with no specialist knowledge in this matter , so I may be mistaken .

I tend to stick to repairing larger clock mechanisms , what with my thick fingers and fondness for espresso coffee ( my eyes aren't getting any better either ! ). I was offered the job of getting a four hundred year old church tower clock up and running in a town in Catalunya . That's right up my street ...... Also up about three hundred steps . Perhaps if they install an espresso machine half way up we've got a deal .
 
On of the first steps to learn how to repad is to select keys that are totally independent.

For a sax that would be the Left hand Palm keys, right hand side F.
On the Bb soprano clarinet that would be the register (simpleist) then the trill keys, then the 2 sliver keys.

After that on sax you have: right hand side keys, and rh pinky keys
clarinet the throat Ab (and getting that right becz of it's height and relation to the throat A key).

Then they all start getting more complicated as the clarinet pad cups also are related to how high or low the ring keys are to the tonehole; and sax all related to other keys too.


on wrist watches I have to use more than 2x, 5x or 10x now to see anything. So I really don't do anything anymore. watches and clocks are fun.
One of the first clocks I bought was back in 1991 which was a really tall grand father curio cabinet clock. I've seen similar ones today but not as wide nor tall.
 
I get what you're saying about re-padding . It's a good observation and something that hadn't occurred to me .

I mostly get Morbier grandfather clocks which were made for about three hundred years by a bunch of French dairy farmers . These clocks became kind of the Model T Ford of clocks throughout a lot of Europe and into Southern Africa and were made in a sort of production line method , in that each of the components was made by a single farmer in his own home and free time . They would then take their components down into the village on Friday to be assembled in a central workshop . Apparently it was their way of making ends meet through the winter months and clearly based upon transferable skills . Cheeses are round and clocks are round so...if you can milk a cow you can make a clock ! ( Perhaps they were also growing marijuana !).

I have a pre-Napoleonic one with screws that are roughly threaded and slightly tapered for just sort of self tapping into the mild steel .
Its decorated above with the rooster ,the ancient symbol of Gaul ,above clasped hands ,which was a Frence Revolution symbol representing the reconciliation between the people and the monarchy . They had chopped the Kings head off !..... but I guess that's one way of refreshing a troubled relationship !
 
It is a lot easier learning to "repad" keywork that is totally independent first.

As when you get to work on keywork that is interlinked somehow, then it gets a lot tougher with more thought.

One always has to be aware of how it currently is set up - the thick or thinness of the corks, the amount of exposure of the pads from the padcup rims, the thickness of the seating of the toneholes into the pads themselves.

When you do a complete refurb with new corks and pads you don't want to put in 1/4" cork where 1/64" inch cork was. You'll be in trouble with the pad to close to the tonehole nearly immediately. And of course if the pad is way too far in the padcup from too little adhesive

Remember the adhesion / glue does a few things:
not only does it stick the pad in the pad cup, but it creates a hard backing for the pad.
It also provides a layer thick/thin enough for the pad to properly be flat to the tonehole in relation to the swing of the keywork.
So one needs to have the proper about of adhesion to place the pad at the proper height in the pad cup to work with the tonehole .... and not too much as that affects venting too (like too much cork on an arm).
 
That sounds like a good breakdown of things to consider to take on re-padding . The matter of the importance of the cork thickness leads me to the question .
Are there reasonably universal measurements for how far pads should open from the tone holes for the respective keys on a bass clarinet , or is there too much variation between models for the ' rule of thumb' to be applicable here ?

That information I would like to know ,if only for the ' Bundy ' Selmer

Selmer USA have what appears to be a very helpful website , but instead I found it to be entirely dysfunctional !
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom