clean or dirty?

[km]

truthfully - do you usually

1 take off mouthpiece, wash mouthpiece & reed, put reed away in case, then pull through horn, or
2 leave it all ready for next time
3 don't remember....

km

[jazzcat58]

if i do a late gig, and the band are packing up, ile clean the next day not worried about that!,if the sax is on a stand for instance and i have been practicing i may leave it for a day or two then ile clean it, i would not leave it for for any longer but i dont feel 24 hours or so matters.
I would be more concerned not cleaning the sax or pulling through as this could affect my pads in the longrun!..

[maddenma]

I do stop short of washing reeds, but pulling the thing apart before I put it away, pulling a swab through the horn and mouthpiece is just basic hygiene.

That said, if I'm not putting the horn away, I've been known to leave a reed on a mouthpiece for a day. I usually try to remember to take the mouthpiece off the neck if for no other reason other than to attempt to keep the neck cork from permanently compressing.

[mi000ke]

Wash reed, ligature and mouthpiece. Have never swabbed my sax, however.

[gary]

Not many options in your poll, are there?
I rub the excess moisture off of my reed and put it in a reedguard and I run a shove-it type swab through the mpc also to remove the moisture. Then I leave them out to dry. I seldom, if ever, wash any of them.
No answer given to your poll.

[alljoe]

i usually take it off and run water through at the sink and put it back on. this clearly doesnt work if not at home but that is where i play.

ah, madenma has a point. since i just had 2 corks replaced i usuallt\y sit it on the stand

[milandro]

yes.....too few options

I use most of the times a padsaver and a mouthpiece saver when going out to play. At home I always put the reed back in the holder and I let the horn dry on a stand. Occasionally I use a pull trough to clean body and neck. These pull-trough get washed regularly. The padsavers get washed a couple of times a year.

Every so often my mouthpieces get a ultrasonic bath with some detergent. I have NEVER had any calcium carbonate scales forming in any of my mouthpieces and the horns have a general clean look , nothing smells. If there is any smell, I put a drop or two of essential lemon oil in the body tube and then pull the pull-trough a couple of times.

[Pete Thomas]

Life is too short for all the washing and pulling through. I don't think of the mouthpiece as dirty when I leave it on the horn, so the subject of the thread is a bit misleading, kind of assumes that ones mouth is somehow dirty. I don't think mine is.

[milandro]

well, depends on what you call dirty.......... for sure the mouth is one of the places of our body with the most bacterias, fungi and other things like protozoa.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are all bad but even the cleanest of the mouth might harbour some nasties and there is no real way to tell if you might be growing some of the nastier things in the saxophone attributes.

On the other hand if these things came from your mouth you are probably protected by your natural resistance to the particular strains living in you.


So, no reason to worry too much and to overclean things.


http://www.brighthub.com/science/gen...les/45935.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_microbiology

[Swing Affair]

Since I use synthtic reeds, I clean occasionally 1 or 2 times a week, reed and s-bow.
With cane I cleaned my reed after every playing.



swing band berlin

[milandro]

you must be German, S-bow, in German S-bogen in not normally a term understood in the English speaking world ......

Cleaning a cane reed is a relative term.......since it is poreus it is almost impossible to “ clean” it and only immersing for some time in some type of disinfectant would have any hope to deal with all sorts of things

[Starsax A2]

Playing at the house makes my routine easy-I swab and then put in a padsaver. I rinse the reed and mouthpiece under tap water, and then dry them with a paper towel. The reed goes back into its guard. I leave the sax case open for about an hour before closing it up and putting it away.

[bkobog]

Swab through the mpc.
dry up the reed with a cloth.
fix the reed back onto the mpc after every gig. latest will be by the next day.

[ratracer]

Horn is completely disassembled after gig or practice. Usual procedure, time allowing, is wipe reed & put in reed guard, run a pull-thru through the horn, neck and mouthpiece. Horn is always on a stand unless being transported. Mouthpiece is washed 3-4 times per year but I'm at best just a weekend warrior, and that's being generous. So, having said all that, I did not answer the survey, as others have indicated, no option really comes close to my habit, but you deserve my opinion anyway!

Since I'm the only one playing the horn, it's only got my bugs in it, so I'm not OCD about the saxophonic hygiene!

[km]

thanks everyone - interesting reading

I know that if I only have a few free minutes - taking a very obsessional approach to cleaning equipment tends to dissuade me from playing

the title was intended to catch the eye - and the forced choice with just two real choices (tending to the cleaner view....tending to the more relaxed view) makes interpretation easier: if there had been more choices I'm sure that someone would have said "but what I do is..."

it seems that the majority view is to pay more attention to reeds than mouthpieces, & least to sax bodies if these are left on stands as mine are - I think that sort of regime I can live with and find more time for practicing

thanks again for your input

km

[hakukani]

I warm up at home--a little trick that my bandleader taught me. That way, I have the reed of the day already on my horn. When I pack up at the end of the night, I shake the water out of the neck, shove in the pad saver, and put the mouthpiece cover over the reed, lig, and mouthpiece. I open the case when I get home and take the reed off the mouthpiece, and put it in the reed guard.

Next time I get the horn out to warm up, I wash the mouthpiece.

[artstove]

Wipe reed on sleeve, put into reedguard. Mouthpiece shaken out. Pull through swab through body, sometimes through neck.

[gary]

Mouthpiece shaken out.

. . . not stirred.

[Marlborough Man]

Like some others, my routine is a little different from the choices offered--

1. Take reed and mp off, run a microfibre clarinet swab through the mp.
2. Wipe reed dry (Legere) and put back on mp, store.
3. Run same swab through neck.
4. Tenor swab the body of the horn.
5. Place cigarette paper (or the newer "woodwind paper" from Zonda, etc) under the certain keys (G#, side Bb, etc)

My pads would be ruined if I didn't do this every time.

http://marlboroughmanmusic.blogspot.com/

[Berg-Man]

I find leaving the reed on the mouthpiece with a good cap gets me more reed life. The reed table has less of tendency to warp when it's clamped to the Mouthpiece table, and a good cap with no venting will keep the reed moist enough to play the next day.