[Clep]

You bet!

Well, ended up replacing ~13 pads and the leaks grew less and less… had to add a little more wax here and there as well. It’s better than my other HM Prof at this point, but still a bit leaky. I suspect a full replacement of all pads would be the next thing to try and I’m starting to run out of energy for the project. But I suspect I’ll get that done at some point.

One update: the dry ice testing doesn’t work so well for small leaks, as it turns out. After the first 8 or 10 pads, the remaining leaks were too small to notice with the dry ice, and I found them only through bubbling. Disappointing, but the dry ice was still handy as far as it went.

The melodica is playable now, but still takes a lot of air (and I suppose it always will; the leaking isn’t substantial at this point, it’s just not helping with the overall air required to play these reeds.)