There are many woodwind players out there, after seeing the cost of maintenance and repairs, want to do their own repairs themselves. When told a re-pad will cost $XX or a cleaning will cost $YY, they think they can save themselves a lot of money and do such things for themselves. Few things will be as costly for your instrument, and could even be the ultimate cost of bringing it to irreparable harm.
One of the chief reasons for this is the fact that, on the surface, many repairs look simple. The pad popped out, just glue it back in, right? Spring got bent, just bend it back, okay? Wrong on both accounts. Yes, these are quick to fix, and a repair technician makes this look easy, but think about how many times the tech has done this repair. Think about all the times they practiced doing these repairs before they were allowed to do it on anything other than a junk instrument.
I went to a school to learn to fix instruments, and we learned pad repair on a cut off section of a clarinet, practicing several hours a day, several days a week before we were even able to show we had a base level competence before we were allowed to try it on a real instrument. In a shop that has apprentices, by the time the apprentice is allowed to install pads on real instruments they've been practicing for untold hours on instruments in the "bone yard" of parts, so they can't possibly screw up someone's personal possession. The students in my class that learned padding the fastest went through dozens and dozens of mistakes: burnt pads, too much glue, too little glue, burning the body of the instrument, burning the finish off the key, tearing the surface of the pad, etc etc etc. These were the ones that picked up the skill quickly, even with the instructors saying as much, and it was still practiced and practiced and messed up and frustration. Now, with that in mind, how easy is any repair? It isn't. Even cleaning had a class, meeting every morning for about an hour for weeks, to make sure it wasn't done incorrectly.
When taking your instrument to a professional technician, more than 99% of them are trying to do one thing and one thing only. They want to make the instrument work right. Yes, they are part of a business and making some money doing it, but that just reinforces what they are truly there for. In order to make a living, they want your instrument to work correctly for as long as possible. If they do a bad job, or gouge you for everything you have, they know you won't be coming back when things need more work. They aren't trying to go after your wallet, they aren't inventing problems like the cliche jokes about mechanics charging for "muffler bearings" or "headlight fluid." They want your instrument to work, and will work with you and explain why it isn't. If they find a problem, it is really there. If they alert you to a problem you didn't know about, it's so that you know about it, what it can do, and what needs to be done to fix it before it gets worse.
There have been many times, in my shop, people have asked me about doing a list of repairs and modifications to their instrument, and I've chopped their list in half when I showed them that the things their asking for were just a waste of their own money. I told them I would do it if they still wanted me to, but I wasn't going to just do something to their instrument that wouldn't result in a worthwhile improvement. Things like replacing with high end pads and springs on a student model instrument are completely unrealistic. To loosely quote a guitar maker, "You can't swap mics on Frank Sinatra to make him sound like Barbara Streisand"
Between the two instrument families I work on primarily, woodwinds take a greater degree of knowledge and consideration when doing any repair or maintenance. Brass has it's own challenges, but woodwinds have to deal with greater degree of variables that have to be eliminated for the instrument to function reliably. These variables are frequently unknown by the player, the parent, the audience member, and usually even the teacher or conductor.
Through their education and training, the technician has to make sure they know the consequences of every aspect of their repairs, and even the consequences of different techniques for that repair. Talk with them about what your instrument is doing wrong, and then trust them that the repair they are doing is what is right. Doing it yourself is a recipe for spending more money, as the tech will likely have to spend at least twice as long. First they have to undo what you did, then they will have to do it right. Not only will this double the labor cost, but they will have to charge your for the materials, and that's not including whatever you spent on your own to try it yourself.
Do yourself a favor and trust them when they quote you a price that they are being upfront with you. Don't try to do the repair yourself.
Unless you want to spend more for the same thing
