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Just about what I'd tell my daughter if she wants a dog. You have to take care of it.
This is quite a dog of an instrument to take care of sometimes. When you blow air into
an instrument you blow spit and sometimes bits of food matter and things so they collect
in the instrument. The way to clean your instrument is with warm soapy water and with a cleaning
snake. This is similar to a cleaning snake. It's about the same length. They are sometimes
made of wire and the usually always have a scrubby little brush on the end. You place
that into your mouth pieces and you scrub it back and fourth with soapy water, gentle
warm soapy water. You give your instrument a bath because your finger oils get on it.
This instrument here is due for a bath. It is an old, old instrument. To clean the tubes
you remove them and do the same process. Push in your cleaning snake, down into the tubes.
It will make the bend and as you are in there scrubbing, back and forth you can just give
it a gentle scrub, like that, just back and forth. Pull it out and put it into the other
side. Make sure that you're getting down around the bend because it's usually where most of
the matter hangs out, is around the bend, and then you can place it back in its proper
place. Always depress the valves when you're moving your slides in and out. Make sure that
your valves are depressed. It can create undo wear and tear on your valves. Generally, I'm
told, that you are supposed to give your instrument, depending on how expensive it is, a chem bath
which basically takes all the deep seated oils off of the surface and from the interior
as well. The inside gets tarnished and affects the sound. Fortunately for me I don't really
play a lot of expensive instruments. I am a junk yard or dumpster brass player who finds
aero phones to be very interesting and they all sound good to me.