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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
My first impressions on the HarpTuner
My first impressions on the HarpTuner
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Matti A
3 posts
Jul 09, 2012
8:06 AM
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Hi all,
I recently got my HarpTuner from Dick Sjoeberg ( www.masterharp.com ), and just wanted to share my first impressions after trying it on a few harps. Mine is a bit of "early production" model, so please excuse me for not posting pictures - Dick will have more information available on his site very soon, but I still wanted to write a quick comment as I think it is one amazing device and I hope to do my little part in spreading the word about Dick's work. (He has also made the UST, now taken up by Seydel as the setup tool, and some special combs)
Regarding tuning overall, I don't know if I am alone in this, but I suspect not: I have tried several approaches, but to tell you the truth, I could never quite get the level of evenness of breath and "touch" on how much to file at each point to make it perfect with even remotely reasonable effort. And thus my tuning results have never been as good as I'd like - but I think tuning really is a critical part of making the harmonica sound good.
Dick's HarpTuner is a wonderful little device that works kind of like a smaller version of the factory tuning devices I'm sure you've all seen at least videos of, with air flow from the device making the reeds play while the reedplate is on the device itself. Then you have sliders to control which reeds play, and can have one or more open. Basically you just draw in air through a tube, the device evens out the airflow (how that happens I don't fully understand, but hey, it works... ) and by opening the sliders you choose which reeds play, making the tuning of them relative to eachother truly a breeze as you can tune the reeds on the spot, and test all intervals and chords and refine the tuning until it's just right. And also setting the reference pitch is so much easier as you get that nice even airflow, but really the tuning of the intervals and chords to perfection easily is what makes the difference for me.
With the device even I (and I am really no professional customizer or player, just a guy who loves to play the harmonica) can get perfect sounding chords (well, as perfect as my ear allows, but that's good enough for me!), and the tuner is really intuitive and quick to use, too. On top of all this, the device looks wonderful and has been constructed with minimal moving parts to break down. Just as an example of the details, there are pins to help instantly correctly position the reedplate so putting the plate in (or taking out) is a really easy and quick.
In addition, Mr. Sjoeberg makes them in two "spacings", for Hohner and Seydel diatonics, but he can add on a gasket that allows you to tune the other reed spacing too - mine is Seydel-based with a Hohner gasket, so the actual slots on the device are for the seydel spacing, but with the special gasket I can tune hohner spacings, too.
Anyway, I just wanted thank Dick for his amazing work, and I would surely recommend also others to take a look at his HarpTuner!
Regards,
Matti
(Just for the record, I am not making a cent on the HarpTuners, my involvement has been limited to some very interesting discussions with Dick around his work and especially the "hybrid gasket"... I am just very happy with the device!)
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arnenym
58 posts
Jul 09, 2012
9:55 AM
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I still waiting for mine.
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KingoBad
1137 posts
Jul 09, 2012
11:10 AM
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He's been working on that tuner a long time. I'm glad to see it's finally coming out.
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Danny
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John Ingham
3 posts
Jul 08, 2014
4:20 PM
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Hey folks!
As an introduction, and at the risk of being redundant as I have posted the same elsewhere, I am the person now making the Sjoberg tuning table here in the US, MasterHarp USA. I have been working directly with Dick for over a year now firing up USA production and selling the US version since February of this year, 2014. I got into this project because as a player with boxes of used and brused harmonicas laying around I myself had draft versions of a tuner on the board so to speak. Then I found Dick's tuner and realized that this guy had it nailed pretty much. An afternoon of watching the Kinya Pollard videos is all it took for me to realize that the Sjoeberg tuner was an incredably enabling tool and exacly what I needed to whip my harps back into shape... and cut that process time and hassle way, way down. Given the opportunity to set up sales manufacturing in the US I did so, joy!
You can now order the Sjoeberg Tuning Table at www.masterharp.com , it's new home. As of this month I have delivered around the world, from Norway to Tasmania. It just makes sense to own one if you are as much of a harmonica fan as I am.
Looking forward...
John Ingham
MasterHarp US
Last Edited by John Ingham on Jul 08, 2014 4:21 PM
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Moon Cat
423 posts
Jul 08, 2014
9:41 PM
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Thanks guys for the reviews and thanks John for what your doing here with this and the support you leant the Harmonica Collective! I think this mechanism is a fine tool and way overdue Thank you for taking the time and trouble to make it available to us all!-Jason Ricci
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www.mooncat.org
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