Dettloff Music and Repair

I’m so excited to work on this clarinet! It’ll be getting a full repad, but before I start with that, I want to make sure the keys are all in alignment. The alternate Bb/Eb key was looking pretty funky, so I bent it back before disassembling. I could see that it had been bent with pliers before, and there’s also evidence that the touchpiece has broken off and been replaced. So I took care to be very gentle with it so as not to break anything again.

The arm of this key was bowed out, which meant taking it to a hockey puck with a divot cut in it and hammering the raised part back down to flat. Makes me wonder if the hockey puck is a common BIR tool or if it’s just that I’m in Minnesota.

There’s still something wibbly about the straightness, but I chose to move on to the angle of the touchpiece before doing anything more. It’s really bent up, compared to the alternate F# key!

Oops! I aligned the alt Bb/Eb to the alt F# key without checking if the alt F# key was good, and now they’re both wrong. Back to bending . . .

Much better!