You should emplty your butt joint regularly while playing for extended periods. two hours is quite a long time to play with out emptying your insrument. Do you have a water key on your insrtument? If not you could get a maker to fit one for a few bucks. He will remove the cap at the end of the but joint and remove the semicircular tubing conecting the two pipes, then he'll put a key to remove water and replace the cap putting a hinge on it so you don't have to take it off completely to use the new key. Water also builds up in the crook ('bocal' in america) so try to keep that dry too. An occasional suck on the reed can keep things to a minimum here but it's a bit icky though! As for pads rattling you should try to get a good repairman (or experienced player) to set your key action to a minimum and you must check the pads for drying out. There are oils and other treatments on the market which you can apply yourself to keep your key-pads from drying out. Bassonists are well known for their fastidious care of their instruments with gadgets and special knives abounding in their instrument cases. If you don't take care of a bassoon it can quickly become a crackly, rattly bundle of sticks which is in fact what the word faggotto means in Italian! Who is your favourite player?

 

Yeah certainly got more protective over my instrument since I've got my own! Been using a music service instrument before. I did read some technique advice to suck the instrument at the bocal etc, did it in front of my teacher (whose first instrument isnt bassoon, sadly) who was positively disgusted!
And our cure of choice for leaky pads seems to be rizlas, so I need to get hold of a new pack.
And I feel terribly uneducated in that I don't have a favourite player . Any favourites I should look up?
Bethx.

 

Well, Rizlas are great for curing the problem but it should not get to that unless you live in an area with high humidity. Try to get a specialist teacher at least for afew lessons. Tell you present teacher about it and explain why. He'll probably try to help find one!
The problem with the bassoon is it's so different from other wind instruments.
You know it's the only instrument that session wind players are not expected to have.
So It needs specialist knowledge....
As for a favourite player, check out Klauss Thunemann playing Vivaldi concertos. Americans also like Milan Turkovitch and George Zuckerman but I personally think Thunemann is the best soloist. Orchestrally speaking I think Merrick Alexander or Jonathan Price (both London players with decades of experience) are the two top players.