Posted by Lee Stofer on June 04, 2003 at 07:31:39:
In Reply to: Instrument freezing... Whats the deal? posted by Mark Preece on June 03, 2003 at 16:34:52:
Cryogenic treatment of instruments has been around for a few years. My understanding is that it is supposed to accomplish the same thing that annealing all the parts and assembling the instrument with no tension in the joints and braces would, but is accomplished all at one time without damaging the finish(hopefully) . There are many variables in how instruments are constructed, so the treatment would work better on some instruments than others. If an instrument was assembled with no appreciable tension in the joints and braces, and all the parts had been annealed between forming and assembly, then cryogenic treating should make virtually no difference. If an instrument was poorly assembled of work-hardened parts, then it should make a tremendous difference. There must be no water or any foreign objects in the instrument, particularly between valves and valve casings or between inner- and outer slide tubes, or the instrument will come out worse-off than before. That is why a thorough cleaning and drying must occur before treating.
Before I'd recommend that sort of treatment for an instrument, I'd first check other problems I regularly see in instruments - leaking water keys, leaking ferrules, dents, leaking valves or slides, and the #1 problem, dirty instruments. After these basic items have been addressed, 99.5% of instruments play just fine.
Lee Stofer