Why Do We Setup Every Instrument???

I have had customers ask me why we need to perform a professional setup on every instrument we receive. Honestly, I understand the reasoning behind the question. It makes sense that some handmade professional instrument should be built, setup and tested by the maker prior to shipping it out.

Sadly, this is not the reality. For example, we recently received a professional clarinet (I will not mention the make or the model as this is not a post intended to cast ANY maker in a negative light) that is made by a reputable professional clarinet maker. This clarinet came in brand new from the factory and immediately I inspected it as I had a customer waiting for it to come in.

With all clarinets, one of the first things that we test is vacuum. This is where you take each joint individually and close all the keys and use your other hand to seal the bottom of the joint. You then start sucking the air out of the joint from the top. If there is vacuum, then it is likely that the clarinet is close to being setup well. We typically like to see 5-7 seconds worth of defined strong vacuum.

On this particular clarinet, the top joint was fantastic. Excellent vacuum that held solid for 10 seconds before I released it. Then I proceeded on to the lower joint with high hopes considering how well the upper joint sealed. Sadly, I was met with disappointment as you could head the air leaking in to the instrument during its vacuum test.

So I started digging around to find the problem. First we test individual pads by adding additional pressure to the top of the key cup one at a time. I went through all the pads on the lower joint and no luck. I then proceeded to put plastic between the pad and the keycup (this would eliminate the pad material as a suspect). Again, went through each pad and had no success.

After all of that, I started to remove keys one at a time to see if there were any bad toneholes that I hadnt noticed on my first inspection. And that’s where I found it. In the F/C tonehole on this professional clarinet, there is a HOLE in the side of the tonehole that leaks all the way through to the body. Here is a photo of this hole:

(click the photo for a larger image)

I was simply perplexed at how this instrument could be sent out by any of the technicians & testers from the factory as acceptable. The hole is even visible on the inside of the bore of the instrument.

While this is one of the most severe defects that I have seen in a long time, these types of issues are not uncommon. This is one of the MANY reasons that we insist on performing a professional setup on every instrument we sell. This clarinet went right back to the maker and did not go out to any customer… but not all stores do what we do. This clarinet could have very easily made it out to a customer.

This is why we setup every instrument, so that you don’t have to ever deal with something like this.