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Summary for Everyday Use: The Care And Feeding Of Your New Oboe
Oiling The Mechanism
Everyone has different ideas about this, but one thing is certain: an
instrument not oiled regularly will lose years of its useful playing life,
since the key mechanism will deteriorate if it isn't taken care of
properly. Do be sure to oil the key mechanism of your oboe at least once
or twice a year. Use just a tiny drop at each location; oil dripped onto
pads or into tone holes can cause real problems, so being very
conservative really pays off.
Cracks
Here are two helpful tips on crack prevention:
Suggestion #1:
A room humidifier. A great way to humidify
your instrument is to humidify the room it lives in. My suggestion is
something big enough to hold at least several gallons of water. I change
the filters regularly and also put a small amount of Clorox into the water
from time to time to take care of any bacteria. The humidifier I use in my
shop has three settings, and the low setting is very quiet. Try to avoid
the noisy humidifiers—which is most of them. A humidifier is a great
investment to protect against cracks and bore shrinkage. There is an
extensive choice of humidifiers available on
www.allergybuyersclub.com
For small case humidifiers, Humistat makes humidifiers that fit in the
little reed case slot in most cases. These are available from most double
reed accessory shops.
Bores shrink and keys bind up as a result of cold weather and low
humidity. Major bore shrinkage can have very negative results in how your
instrument performs. It can quite literally play like a different
instrument, and I don’t mean this as a positive.
Suggestion #2:
Don't blow warm air through a cold instrument.
If you arrive at a rehearsal or concert and your instrument is cold, put
down your instrument case, open it, and leave it while you get everything
else organized. This way the instrument comes to room temperature on its
own. Warm air & cold oboes spell disaster. Some cracks are more serious
than others. The traditional spots to watch for are: 1) between the tone
holes of the two trill keys and 2) everything going north from the half
hole, including all the posts. The second areas to keep an eye on are the
places where wood covers metal, i.e. the top of the middle joint and the
top of the bell. Wood can shrink over a metal tenon, which cannot shrink.
We all know what happens next. The good news is that these cracks are far
less serious, and don’t go anywhere.
If
you've bought an instrument and it cracks on the top joint, stop playing
it, contact your repairer, and don't wait for the crack to get worse. It's
important that cracks be caught and repaired as soon as possible. This is
also true for used instruments that haven't been played regularly for some
time. They should be reintroduced to playing gradually, as if they had
never been played. I call this a mini-break-in period. It can be quite a
bit shorter than a new instrument, but the owner still needs to be very
careful getting the instrument acclimatized to being played again.
Oiling the Bore
Oiling the bore of
an instrument has been a controversial issue. The late American oboe maker
Paul Covey recommended oiling the bore of his instruments once a day
during the break-in period up to one month. On the flip side of the coin,
Hans Moennig said never do it! People who have advised against oiling the
bore of an instrument usually do so for one of two reasons: first, they
are concerned that oil doesn't get on the pads and, second, no one should
be oiling the bore of a plastic instrument, or one with a bore liner. This
includes all plastic oboes, all instruments with synthetic top joints,
most Laubin oboes, and all the instruments available with liners these
days—Howarths, Yamahas, Foxes, etc. If you are completely sure that you
have a wooden instrument without
a liner, and if you aim your oiled feather along the south side of the
bore instead of where the pads are, you will be doing the right thing.
Since players I work with started following these recommendations, my
crack work decreased by about 30%. So I know it works!
Oil the bore of a new instrument once a week for the first few months,
gradually decreasing the frequency after that. A good rule of thumb is
once a month for the life of the instrument once the instrument is
completely broken in. Use a feather that has been dipped in one drop of
almond oil. Virtually all health food stores sell almond oil. Just
remember that since it is natural and organic, it will go rancid after
about two years. Do replace it after that time period, simply because
rancid almond oil doesn’t do any oboe any good, and it smells awful, too.
If you have a second instrument, alternate them, playing the new
instrument every second day, and for very short periods of time, keeping
the bore as dry as possible. Gradually increase the playing time, and try
to keep to the every other day program as long as you can. This also
applies to older instruments that haven't been played in years.
Here's the
raison dêtre of it all: the oil will help prevent moisture/water
from expanding the inner bore. Cracks in the top joint are the result of
the inner bore getting wet and expanding, while the outside remains as it
was—dry. The wood's reaction to this stress is a crack, and this is why so
many new instruments crack where all that moisture condenses in the upper
joint.
How to Keep Your Instrument Looking and Playing Like New
Even if you've just
bought your oboe, sooner or later nearly all of us sell an instrument. For
this reason, it's important to realize that the initial visual impression
of an instrument (plus its case and case cover) can have what seems like a
disproportionate effect on a prospective buyer's willingness to consider
an instrument. So
it is a good idea to give your instrument the best possible care from Day
One. Some obvious suggestions born out of my experience selling used
instruments:
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