Fixing Bent Clarinet Keys

Video Transcript

"Now I'm going to show you about some bent keys. Now basically bent keys can happen any number of ways that your instrument gets dropped, you get caught on something. I mean there are numerous ways where, how it can get damaged. One big, definitely big one, is when you're disassembling your clarinet and, you know, you bend keys all up by trying to put it together. That's a big one. Another one is that the bridge key here will get bent because of putting together and not putting together properly. And then we have we have trill keys up here that really do get bent quite a bit just because of their location. They're kind of sticking up on the instrument so they definitely get damaged. This is the quickest. But, the way to fix those, if you're brave, take a pair of jawless pliers here, teethless pliers I should say. And you want to kind of just get on as much leverage as you can on the key and very, very, very slowly yearn it over. Now some clarinets or some instruments are definitely easier than others to straighten it depending on the alloy of the metal and the make, quality of that and such. But that is how to straighten some bent keys."