I'm an Australian design student who is re-thinking the harmonica. I love the instrument and want to keep it original (same note layout etc) but I want to update the design to bring it into the 21st century.
Where YOU can help me is by posting problems that you frequently have with your harmonica, or things that could make your Mississippi saxophone better.
Some ideas that I've started with are to make cleaning and internal maintenance far easier, with less nails, screws and nuts. Sharp corners and hard to hold harps are another problem I want to fix.
Post your suggestions below, I'd love to hear them!
My one thought about what you said above is the "less screws" Comment. While it would be easier to take apart, i feel, the more screws you have holding the harp together the better seal you have between the parts. So is that worth compromising to make the harp slightly easier to disassemble? My answer would be no. So just something to think about. If you get rid screws your going to have a potential leakage issue.
I have some ideas about how to redesign a harp. Is this for a project or. ...? ----------
Hey Guarantor – You should look up Brad Harrison and the B-Radical harmonica. He is a harp customiser who reinvented the diatonic harp a few years ago. Ultimately he couldn't make it work as a business and had close down.
However, the B-Rad harp he was making was full of great ambitions and ideas. As you mentioned above it used less screws to assemble it – I think the covers snapped together. Another big point was that you could change out each individual reed easily rather then having to change the whole plate or fiddle around with riveting tools etc.
Here's a promotional video, it might give you some ideas:
Might be outside of keeping it original, but take a look at 30 reed harps (x-reed.com). If nothing else, it's an inspiration as to what limitations are being looked at.
For original, look for ergonomics, rounded edges, no tiny opening in the front of the coverplates to snag facial hair. Easily replaced individual reeds. Overblowing is growing and so construction should suit this. Some models have a bad squeal when overblowing. I don't know if there is a relationship between the dimensions of the reeds or the method of mounting them that contributes to it, but you could find a way around that.
Edit: i wonder (out loud) if the true ROI lies not in a new design of the instrument, but in a new design of the manufacturing process to actually produce them.
Last Edited by Tyler on Apr 18, 2016 8:48 AM
I'd start by looking at some of the other non-traditional ways to hold harmonicas together. Yonberg has a harp that holds it's reed plates on with these little switch thingies. (I haven't seen one up close, just in the videos). Turboharp has their turbolids, which snap on. Both take one layer of screws out of the equation.
I've messed around with the idea of using magnets to hold covers on. Basically, I mounted a magnet in each end of the comb and put a little nub where the screw hole was (to keep it from sliding side to side. Magnets are great for holding things together, but not so great for preventing sliding). The problem I ran into was that if you got the covers near another magnet they'd get pulled off. Of course, with magnets you also have to be very careful not to let them be loose, since they are fairly dangerous if a kid gets ahold of them and swallows them (not to bad if they only swallow one, but they can be lethal if they swallow two).
Screws for reeds instead of rivets would make it a little easier, especially for someone who doesn't have a lot of mechanical skill, to swap reeds, but for someone who doesn't have a lot of mechanical skill the next step- tuning the reed, might still be an issue. If you had a reed that was already tuned it might help, but I suspect that part of the tuning is getting the reed seated correctly.
I've wondered, if you were machining the combs already, if it might be possible to combine the reed plate and the comb. Of course, the problem there is getting access to do fine adjustments to the reeds. I had a vague idea that it might be possible to make two half combs, top and bottom, that slotted together, that worked as reed plates too.
The Hohner Puck uses grooves to hold it's covers on. That takes some careful tolerances. It slides end to end. I've thought about a C shaped cover that would serve as both top and bottom that slid on front to back using a similar groove to the Hohner Puck's.
I've thought about a screw/dial that was mounted on the cover that you would turn 90 degrees to release to get the cover off. (I'm not sure what you call them. You see them sometimes on panels)
Rounding the corners, of course, is a great way to make them more comfortable, and personally, I like less material on the end. I'd be perfectly happy with a harmonica that only was one tine's space longer than the row of holes, but I know that's a matter of taste.
A couple harp designs now have more room on the low end under the covers, the Hohner Thunderbird and the Turbolids, to make sure you don't get any reed rattle. Other harps just make the covers higher down the whole length.
I don't play in a rack, but I know there are several devices that help you attach your harp to a mic stand. You would want to be careful to make sure your harp didn't present any problems attaching to any of the standard stands/racks.
Like Tyler says a comment up, a lot of it has to do with the manufacturing process. Screws are easy for repair, but hard to do on the assembly line compared to rivets. Harrison tried assembling with screws. On the other end of the spectrum there used to be a company called Magnus that made plastic harmonicas. The whole harp was 5 pieces, 2 covers, a comb, and two reed plates- complete with plastic reeds from the same injection mold! Later they played around with metal covers and reed plates too, which led me to discover something important- if you have metal cover plates they need to rest entirely on a metal reed plate or comb. The sharp edges of a metal cover setting against a non-metal surface acts like a wedge that splits it. It happened on the hybrid Magnus's and it's part of the problem, imo, with why Golden Melody combs split.
Play around with where the comb meets the lip and where the lips slide on the harp. One company experimented with Teflon! Some harps use a separate mouthpiece to cover where the cover/plates/comb meet.
Thanks so much everyone for your posts so far! B radical is a fine example and although their business didn't catch on, I still found one that sold for $500 on ebay, before they went bust, so people were desperate to get their hands on one BEFORE they went under. Impressive. I'm also itching to get my hands onto a Yongerg... they look so nice and my inner designer can't resist those curves!
Killa_Hertz I'm struggling with your problem right now- how to make sure the design is air tight, while also making it a breeze to dis-assemble. (pardon the pun)
Tyler, I never thought of snagging facial hair! I'd better make sure there's no remote chance of that happening.
Nate, thanks for your in-depth post! it seems you've already got some ideas and thank you for lending them to me for inspiration! Don't worry, you won't see any of your designs popping up in shops near you ;)
Just to answer the question, it this project started as a personal interest but I've been able to incorporate it into my studies too- I've talked to Brendan Power, Adam Gussow, Jerry Portnoy and Rick Estrin via email and their knowledge and thoughts have been priceless!
I Dont think that the B RAD was due to lack of interest or catching on. I think it was just to expensive to manufacture in the U.S. and the buisness model was just not great. I wish someone would buy the patent and start Reproducing these bad Boys. Ide love to get my hands on one.
Im really a fan of Nates Idea of getting rid of the Reed plates. You could make the harmonica a build your own type kit. Or It could come assembled and you just replace reeds as needed. But if the reeds had screws holding them into the comb. you could replace the entire set rather quickly and even change the key of the harp if you really wanted to. I realize it would take a certain amount of skill to maintain a harp like this. But most of us adjust, shape , gap our harps anyways. I dont think it would be that tough. certainly not a beginners harp, but ...
if you CNC a comb but put little recesses at the top of the tines to where the reeds would sit down into the comb, this would make up for having to off set your roots to get a better reed shape. because now your not compensating for the thickness of the reedplate. I know the blow reeds would be a pain to set the gaps for. But IDK i thought it was a pretty good idea.
Or maybe keep the original design all together, but just come up with a new way of production. One that makes it cost efficient to make perfectly flat combs and reedplates on a stock ootb harp.
But I think a Fully modular design would be cool. To be able to order every piece individually. From comb material, down to the individual reed, to even reed material. Different model coverplates could be ordered with another models reedplates, all on a custom comb. ----------
Gurbanator... lol, if any of my ideas do make it into a shop I'd actually love it! I just think about these things for fun. I don't have the attention span (or the equipment) to get them market rea... oooo, look, a squirrel!!!
I went through this mental exercise (harp design) many moons ago. When I got to the reed itself I realized that this is the place where I should have started. I believe it to be the only part where innovation has stagnated.
Coining has been mentioned here on MBH (STME?). It sounds like a possibility but my limited knowledge of metallurgy curbed my thinking in that direction. Certainly the metal properties would change but I have no idea if it would be for the better. If I had the skill (and desire) to experiment with different materials on paper or computer I could see pursuing that path.
I like the idea of grinding with the grain along the length of the reed. There are patents for procedures that will accomplish this and as I recall they predate Harrison Harmonicas by decades.
As far as the cause of Harrison Harmonicas failure: I know nothing of the particulars but I was shocked when I took a you-tube tour of the factory which revealed nothing but state of the art machinery and tools. Very 'impressive' for a startup.
These days, there are many engineers and designers coming up with clever ways of assembling machines with minimal use of tools. I rebuilt an old HP laser printer (4100n) last night without using a single tool. Granted it's not airtight but it is tight. And now it works like new.
If I was really into it I would search harp related patents just to get an idea of what others are thinking.
This is just my way of seeing it, I know, but to me the point of a harmonica is that it's a 'make-do' instrument. It's a piece of junk that you can get a tune out of. It has a certain charm and there have been some amazing players, but it's still just a bit up the chain from a kazoo or a toy drum. If your gonna make a super duper harmonica...just get a real instrument. A slick harp is like a hot rod VW beetle. It's just a piece of crap someone spent money on. Of course, I'm a sucker for it too. I've got heaps of tricked up harps... But the harmonica is inherently a novelty, or a cheap portable instrument. A guy offered me a Bradical at $450 recently...I thought about it, and I realised eventually that for all its rarity and interesting design and lengthwise milled reeds, it's still just a harmonica. It's not suddenly a trumpet or saxophone or piano, it's just a versatile little approximate music tool...it's not gonna sound any better than a marine band or special 20 when I play it. Not 'really'. It might last longer, but at that price I can buy 9 sp20s, and fix them up when they break if I want... Anyway...just my spin I know
SuperBee, I think there are a couple things that are right and a couple things that are wrong with that. Musically I think it's more than a make do instrument, but there are some things about a harp, just by its very nature, that make it something people think about in a disposable way:
First, unless you spend tons of time on special techniques you are going to need a set of them. Yes, a lot of guitar guys have lots of guitars, and there are differences between acoustic, electric, steel, etc., but fundamentally if you play guitar it's easy to join in on any song with any guitar that is nearby. Most instruments take to chromatic playing easier than the diatonic harmonica. (Of course, there is the chromatic harmonica, but it has a different sound!)
Second, most instruments it's pretty easy to either swap reeds really quickly if something cracks (your woodwinds) or play around the missing note until the end of the song (strings).
If you could get a harmonica where it was as easy to swap a reed as it was to change the string on a guitar, or better yet, as easy as it is to swap a reed on a sax, then I think people would think of it differently.
Maybe if each pair of reeds came in a set in cartridge that slid in the back of the harp and sort of snapped in. That would let you have them all tuned and gapped correctly. If you blow a reed then you could just pinch some snaps on the back and slide the old cartridge out and the new one in. You could label them something like C7, which would mean it was the for a C harp 7 hole. (I haven't thought about this before, but there would be overlap, wouldn't there, there are some holes in harps that are the same pair of reeds as a different hole on a different key or tuning). There would actually be a lot of advantages to something like that. It would be really easy to take the reeds for one hole out to clear a jam. It would be really quick to swap out a bad reed set (assuming you had some spares). It would be really easy to mess around with unusual tunings. A manufacturer could even sell, for instance, the cartridge to turn your harp from a standard tuning to a Paddy Richter or a Country Tuned.
The downside would be you'd have to figure out how to manufacture it at a good price point and you'd have to have enough product volume so you could expect to walk into your local harmonica shop and expect to find the replacement cartridges. And you'd have to, I suspect, make sure it was a particularly high quality instrument to convince anyone to try something that new.
Same goes for getting a harp that could switch keys easily that retained the playing feel of a diatonic. Imagine, for instance, if someone invented an improvement on the Turboslide, where instead of a button on the end just changing the pitch of the reeds by a half step if there was a knob that let you dial through all the different keys. (You could probably do something like that if you went to an entirely electronic model. Or maybe if you wanted a $10,000 harp maybe you could do something with real reeds and electromagnets!)
