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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
REVIEW: Hohner Traveling Harmonica Roadshow
REVIEW: Hohner Traveling Harmonica Roadshow
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cliffy
90 posts
Jun 11, 2014
9:49 AM
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Review of Honer Harmonica Traveling Roadshow (long)
The other night, I attended the Hohner Traveling Harmonica Roadshow in Huntington Station, New York, at the Sam Ash music store. I thought I'd give my thoughts on it in case any of you were considering going to one of the Roadshow events as they make their way around the US.
This is a long post, so I will get right to the point... It's a fun event and you should definitely go check it out. The roadshow has an old-timey carnival motif and they had little giveaways for everyone. I scored a T-shirt but I got jealous of my friend who got a Hohner baseball hat. Other folks got cool vintage metal signs that would be perfect if you had a basement music room.
Adam "the bearded technician" was a really nice guy and he did free repairs for a number of players that came to the roadshow. He repaired two of my harps that had slightly flat reeds; he did it in what seemed like only a few seconds without taking the covers off. It's clear that he's tuned probably 20 or 30,000 harps and it he really made it seem easy. Almost easy enough for me to try it myself. I was tempted to go to the Carle Place Roadshow just so I could bring a few more beat-up harps, but I thought that might be taking advantage.
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cliffy
91 posts
Jun 11, 2014
9:50 AM
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When they say "bearded technician", they are not kidding. Adam has a beard that most Amish people and ZZ Top are jealous of. From the quick playing of harps while he was tuning them, he's also a pretty badass player. He also played guitar while Ronnie demo-ed multiple harmonica models.
There was a mix of players attending the roadshow, from 30-and 40-year players to at least one or two people that were brand-new and had never really played harmonica before the curious about it. To be honest, I don't get out very much, so was it was nice for me to be able to sit and hang out with some harmonica playing pals.
Ronnie Shellist, the "lead" presenter, played really excellent acoustic harmonica. His tone and phrasing are excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to his playing. Ronnie sings pretty well and his vocal style suited the guitar-and-harp duo well. He's a good presenter and he was really enthusiastic without being syrupy or cheesy about it. I have an album of his and I liked it a lot, so seeing Ronnie play was what got me interested in the Roadshow in the first place.
Ronnie showed some of the small differences between many of the higher-end Hohner models by playing them one after another over some guitar grooves laid down by Adam. To be honest, all of them sounded great (I guess there is a lot to the "the tone comes from the player, not the gear" moralizing we all hear on MBH forum and Harp-L after all), but the character of each harp started to become clearer to me. I liked the MB Deluxe a lot along with the Crossover, but the regular MB sounded great too. Ronnie also played the Rocket and the Thunderbird models as well.
As good as Ronnie's second position playing was -- and it was really really good -- I was most impressed by his first position blues. When most guys play straight harp blues, they all seem to pick from a very limited vocabulary. Ronnie can definitely do a lot more than the same twelve or so 1st position licks we hear from everybody. He's got a lot of fluidity and uses the middle of the harp well in 1st, not just the top and bottom of the harp.
One of the highlights for me was when Adam played a low-low F Thunderbird harmonica. He played a groove on the first couple of holes while Ronnie soloed with a regular low F Thunderbird. The low-low F must be in the range of a bass harmonica. What a cool thumpy sound it makes!
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Last Edited by cliffy on Jun 11, 2014 10:21 AM
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cliffy
92 posts
Jun 11, 2014
9:52 AM
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As far as equipment goes, I had hoped that Ronnie would have the Memphis Mini amplifier, but instead he played through a little Vox amp that they sell in the store. He brought along a gorgeous custom wood microphone from MBH's own Greg Heumann. I forgot to ask him which kind of wood it was made from, but it has a nice grain and the finish was smooth and shiny. The mic had the volume control on the tail. I got to handle it a little bit and the volume control was very smooth -- the microphone was really beautiful and lightweight. I thought I overheard him say the mic had a black CR element in it. When he demo-ed the Discovery chromatic, he played some outstanding slow third-position George Smith-style octaves and the tone was fantastic.
Ronnie led the class in learning basic a blues progression. This was old hat for many of the really experienced players, but there were also a fair number of traditional chromatic harmonica players that haven't really played diatonic before. Some of them were from the Long Island harmonica club, which means two Wednesdays of each month in Massapequa (I can get contact information for anyone that's interested).
Recently there was an MBH forum post (or was it a Harp-L post?) lamenting the fact that you had to buy a harp to try it out; that there are no demo harps to try before spending your hard-earned money. This has always been a barrier to trying the more expensive models for me, because like many of you, I have kids and a mortgage and my wallet is frequently empty after the bills are paid at the end of the month, leaving few spare bucks to try new harps. This is where the Roadshow shines... One of my favorite parts of the evening was trying some of the orchestral and vintage harps along with the "petting zoo" of the newer models. They were wiping the harps down liberally with alcohol so people could try them. Maybe germophobes might have been creeped out, but I was really excited to have the ability to try some high-end harps without having to lay out sixty-plus dollars. I tried the Thunderbird, which I loved, the MB deluxe, which seems like a really excellent blues-focused harp, and the Rocket. The Rocket, while not my favorite harp of the bunch (still the Crossover for me), plays lightning fast and gets a lot of sound for relatively little effort. I thought I was going to hate the narrow dividers between the holes but it turned out to be no big deal. If I was a pro player, and I had to play some rock stuff, the Rocket would be my choice. Fast runs can take on a Popper- or Ricci-sequel blistering pace with this harp.
I was blown away by the overall quality of the $60-and-up harps in general. For years I played Big River Harps because that's what I could afford, so these were a real treat.
Overall, the Hohner Roadshow was a lot of fun and it was FREE, which makes it even better. My main recommendation for change would be simply to have Ronnie and Adam play more songs. They were awesome together and it made for great listening.
I would have been interested in -- since Ronnie and Adam were already there and all -- paying a fee for a more advanced session after the completion of the regular Roadshow. I definitely would have paid thirty bucks or more for some higher-level stuff. I can see how it wouldn't have fit into what they were trying to do with the Roadshow currently; the idea was to introduce the different models of harps to a wide variety of people. But maybe a one-hour session on harp repair for $20 and an hour on advanced acoustic blues techniques for another $20?
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cliffy
93 posts
Jun 11, 2014
9:52 AM
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The only other constructive criticism I will make is that while Ronnie and Adam had brought some harps for the store to sell to attendees, Sam Ash and most other music stores typically do not carry enough of the newer models and even when they do, they don't have all the keys, and they are seven or so dollars more expensive per harp than online stores. This is why so many of us use online vendors like Ron, etc. I'd like to see the music store get something back so that they will want to host next year's edition of the Roadshow.
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cliffy
115 posts
Sep 29, 2014
6:25 PM
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Bump - because someone was looking for reviews of this
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Thievin' Heathen
398 posts
Sep 29, 2014
7:37 PM
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I caught them in Dallas. Good point about brick & mortar stores. Slightly more expensive and limited selection. It is almost as if they know I am going to buy online. Ronnie & Adam are out there promoting Hohner and Sam Ash gets you into their store instead of Guitar Center. That's about as close to a win-win as you can get. I don't really expect Sam Ash to start carrying the stock that Ron puts only a few key strokes away.
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