I`m just getting myself into the bassoon. Have been playing for only a few months, and really, really enjoy it. The keys on my bassoon are really really badly tarnished and dull. Anything at all that I can do to make them shine like new again? or anything I can use? I`v tried the polishing cloths, and (carefully) tried home polishers, but absolutly nothing works. not even in the slighest.

I dunno. My bassoon is probably older than I am, and its keys have always been tarnished. Nothing really works on my bassoon either. You can sort of dust it, but thats all I`ve ever been able to do.

The acids in the natural oils of your skin eat away the plating of the keywork, making them tarnish. Properly wiping the keywork everytime you play will slow it down, but not stop it.
If you have silver plated keys (I don`t remember if it works with nickle plating), there`s a product out there that helps retard the tarnishing process that occurs over time. I can`t remember the name of it, but try a google on ` bassoon tarnish`, it might pop up :-)

Hi,

I`ve had my bassoon about 3 years, but it is about 20 years old. Apart from some black marks on my boot which look like BURN marks.....an oboeist must have gotten mad! Well I have a trumpet shining cloth. It has 2 different fabrics....one to shine it and stuff and the other buffs it up. It has some little chemical in it. It isn`t expensive and does a good job, or you could buy a new bassoon! Although wehn you try out a cloth, try it on the bottom of the boot or someplace incase for SOME weird reason it ruins the bassoon * i have no clue how that would happen but that`d be horrbile* hope that helps!

If you have silver plated keys, you should take all the keys off (or have a music repair shop do it for you, so they get them on again) and polish it with silver polish. For nickel keys, they also need to be polished, but I don`t know of any products that polish nickel. Invent something.