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Marks Tuning Tip
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MP
2743 posts
May 08, 2013
6:01 PM
after replacing hundreds of reeds and tuning hundreds of harps
one manages to stumble upon little tricks to make work go a little bit faster.

when tuning, one plinks reeds to get the tuning to settle in but i've discovered another method that works most of the time on a lot of reeds.

i'll bend the reed i'm tuning while the harp is assembled sans cover plates.
for instance, if it is a 2 blow i'm tuning down by removing brass at the fixed end, i'll draw bend two to the floor. as we know. when you bend a draw note the blow note is the reed that sounds. the draw reed seizes up. with the blow reed vibrating it tends to 'settle in to pitch'.

for draws 7,8,9,10. i'll do blow bends (ala Jimmy Reed) to the same end. repair guys know that plinking high pitched short reeds can knock out the gap in short order. you can use overblows and over draws for this technique too.

for most of the longer reeds blow reeds plinking is no problem. it is those short, high pitched reeds one has to be careful plinking. like Eb or say, F#. sometimes, even though it is the draw reed that sounds on a blow bend the reed seizing up will get knocked into pitch....if you get lucky. most of the time it works for me.
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MP
affordable reed replacement and repairs.

"making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time"

click user name [MP] for info-
repair videos on YouTube.
you can reach me via Facebook. Mark Prados

Last Edited by MP on May 08, 2013 6:09 PM


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