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Cleaning a horn after you've been sick
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 8:28 am
by Tarkus697
So long story short, played a gig last weekend with what I thought was a bad cold.
Turns out I have pneumonia. I'm going to sterilize the mouthpiece but as for the horn itself, anything I can do to make sure it's clear of any infectious diseases as I'd rather NOT get this ick again when I play the horn next.
Thanks,
Alan
Re: Cleaning a horn after you've been sick
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:07 am
by ghmerrill
Definitely worth doing since there are a significant number of cases (sometimes even called "trombone lung", though not restricted to trombones) where the player GOT the pneumonia (or something worse) from the instrument in the first place. Luckily, cleaning a trombone is really easy (even a double valve one) -- unlike cleaning, say, a tuba or euphonium (for which I have a specially built set of equipment and a rather lengthy ritual).
Just clean the horn thoroughly (thoroughly!!) with soap/detergent, maybe an antibacterial one. If you want to go all the way, you could then disinfect it with vinegar or alcohol. Vinegar is great, but be careful with it and raw brass since if you leave it on the surface long enough (or "soak" with it), it will leach metals out of the brass alloy.
If you don't habitually clean your instrument regularly, maybe now is the time to think about it.
Re: Cleaning a horn after you've been sick
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:20 am
by Kingfan
Bought a horn off a guy once and took a look down the inner slide tubes. Yikes! I flushed out smelly brown sludge that had probably been building up for years. The biggest wad took up 1/3 of the diameter of the tube. How he could play the horn like that is a wonderment to me! Straight horn, so I flushed the slide, snaked out the worst crud, then soaked the entire horn in an antibacterial hand soap solution, snaked and flushed again.
Re: Cleaning a horn after you've been sick
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 11:54 am
by Tarkus697
I have all my horns chemically cleaned once a year by a pro, so I'll probably give this one to him for a once-over even though I just had it done a few months ago.
Re: Cleaning a horn after you've been sick
Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2018 1:08 pm
by Schlitz
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Re: Cleaning a horn after you've been sick
Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2018 9:20 pm
by Tarkus697
ghmerrill wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:07 am
Definitely worth doing since there are a significant number of cases (sometimes even called "trombone lung", though not restricted to trombones) where the player GOT the pneumonia (or something worse) from the instrument in the first place. Luckily, cleaning a trombone is really easy (even a double valve one) -- unlike cleaning, say, a tuba or euphonium (for which I have a specially built set of equipment and a rather lengthy ritual).
Just clean the horn thoroughly (thoroughly!!) with soap/detergent, maybe an antibacterial one. If you want to go all the way, you could then disinfect it with vinegar or alcohol. Vinegar is great, but be careful with it and raw brass since if you leave it on the surface long enough (or "soak" with it), it will leach metals out of the brass alloy.
If you don't habitually clean your instrument regularly, maybe now is the time to think about it.
I can say that I didn't get the pneumonia from the horn. I had this one chemically cleaned earlier this year and had been using it regularly with no issues. I think it was just a matter of bad timing with me having a gig and then being diagnosed shortly thereafter. I hadn't played it in a few weeks before this last gig.