groyster1
2877 posts
Sep 28, 2016
7:31 PM
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I have many of these awesome harps.....it has been my understanding that the brass used in these harps is not available anymore or anywhere....
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JInx
1237 posts
Sep 28, 2016
7:59 PM
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In days of old when knights were bold
and toilets weren't invented,
they laid their load upon the road
and walked away contented !
(circa 5th grade - ~'68)
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SuperBee
4148 posts
Sep 29, 2016
2:26 AM
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I think there was a bit of lead in the copper alloy used for those.
I understand the lead does leach out as its handled.
Do you think the brass contributes to the sound? I'm dubious about the idea but I've heard people claim it makes a difference.
I only have one prewar marine band and a prewar 270. I can't hear a difference that I can attribute to the brass.
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Mensh
47 posts
Sep 29, 2016
6:04 AM
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Got some pictures?
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www.thebluesprofessors.com
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florida-trader
1007 posts
Sep 29, 2016
7:09 AM
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Like you George, I have a lot of the pre-war harps featuring the six pointed star. Some might argue that it is not the Star of David but that is a discussion for another time. Your post is about the metal. I have grown very fond of restoring these old beauties and I have wondered about the type of brass as well. To say that the type of brass used in these harps is not available anymore doesn’t make much sense to me. What technology or what raw materials were available 100 years ago that are not available today?
At this stage of the proceedings I have probably built or restored over a thousand harps and probably about 100 or more pre-wars. Here are my observations about the various metals used in reed plates. I will start with the metal being used today by the Hohner, Suzuki and Seydel. Hohner uses brass which is, by far, the softest of the three. The brass reeds are maneuver, meaning if you want to adjust the gap it doesn’t take much to get them to move. When tuning, it is very easy to remove a little material. Suzuki uses phosphor bronze. It is a stiffer and harder metal. If you want to adjust the gaps you have to do a lot more work to move the metal. Generally speaking gaps on stock harps tend to be a bit too wide so as we work on harps the default “fix” is to make the gaps narrower. When you push down on the phosphor bronze reeds they just spring back to their original position. You have to push down repeatedly to get it to stay in the new position. When tuning, since the metal is harder, it takes longer than the Hohner reeds to remove the appropriate amount of metal. It’s not a big deal but the difference is obvious. Seydel is moving in the direction of using exclusively stainless steel reeds so I will direct my comments to them. The Stainless Steel reeds are another leap with regard to the hardness of the metal and the amount of effort it takes to adjust gaps and tune the reeds. Interestingly enough, the quality of the construction and set-up of the reed plates from these three companies sort of matches the degree of difficulty working on them. In other words, coming straight from the factory, Hohner reed plates have the most “issues”. Gaps are too wide. Sometimes the reeds are off center. Often they are not flat – there is an arc in the shape. They are not tuned correctly. But because the brass is so easy to work with it is very easy to fix them. Suzuki welds reeds to the plate instead of using rivets. Their reed plates are beautiful. They are gapped better at the factory. The reeds are rarely off center. Every once in a while, you’ll find one that is slightly off center but interestingly enough, there actually is a little play in the welded construction so you can swivel them over and center them. And the tuning is more consistent according to what Suzuki states is their standard tuning (which I do not like so I re-tune them to Modern Compromise Tuning – like a Marine Band). The quality of the Seydel reed plates is superb. You practically don’t have to do anything to them. The gaps are good. The reeds are flat and centered and the tuning is generally very close to where Seydel states it wants them to be. I’m not talking about building a full blown custom harp. I’m just talking about basic stuff to get a harp to be responsive and play in tune. And I am not saying that one brand is better than the other. When a skilled harp tech is finished with any of the three brands, you are going to have a good harp. But to bring things back full circle and make this relevant to the conversation, I think that the type of metal used by each manufacturer is almost a philosophical question. All things being equal, one could argue that the softer brass reeds of the Hohners should be easier to bend. But a thinner piece of phosphor bronze or stainless steel could be as flexible as a thicker piece of brass. I haven’t really studied the dimensions of the respective reeds but that might be an interesting project.
All of the above is meant to provide a frame of reference. In my experience working with pre-war harmonicas, in my opinion, the brass is softer than what is being used today. I have actually been thinking about having some reed plates analyzed. In fact, as I was writing this I took a quick time out to make a call and discovered that it would cost me $275-$325 to get this done. All I have to do now is figure out if I am curious enough to spend that much. I will say that one adjective that is frequently used to describe the way the pre-wars play is “Butter”. Totally unsolicited, that is the reaction that I have gotten over and over. They play a pre-war and when the stop the just smile and say, “Butter”. For whatever that is worth.
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Tom Halchak
www.BlueMoonHarmonicas.com
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nacoran
9245 posts
Sep 29, 2016
7:37 AM
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Tom, the story I've heard was that the old brass had lead in it. Articles on brass say it was often added to older alloys to make it easier to machine. I imagine regulations tightened. It's fine for a reed, but is something to keep in mind if you are grinding them to tune them.
The stairs outside my apartment keep losing their paint. The first few years I was here they had one coat, but all the newer coats start peeling in a year. I suspect it's got something to do with the mix of the paint having to have lower VOC off gassing. Better for the environment, but I think the low VOC stuff is new enough that they are still trying to get the formulations just right. (I think the apartments were built after they banned lead paint. Lead paint was banned in 1978, and the apartments, I think, were early 80s, but I could be wrong.)
Maybe you could do a kickstarter to share the reed analysis data? I'd chip in $5-$10 in the name of science. :)
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Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
First Post- May 8, 2009
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STME58
1845 posts
Sep 29, 2016
7:48 AM
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Tom, thanks for sharing your insights and experience. This discussion reminds me of a conversation I had with a banjo maker about the brass used in tone rings. He wanted to make new banjos that duplicated the sound of instruments made in the 20's and 30's so he was naturally curious about the brass used in the tone rings. His research turned up that a lot of it came from brass parts salvaged from scrapped trolleys! Each batch was different depending on the mix of trolley parts melted down to cast the tone rings.
You asked this rhetorical question, "What technology or what raw materials were available 100 years ago that are not available today?" and the answer from a technical standpoint is that everything that could be done then could still be done now. However from a supply chain standpoint, getting a custom alloy of brass is not something a small buyer can do. Unless you are a huge supplier (like maybe, Ford or Toyota), you have to order out of the catalog of ready made sheets or rolls of metal. With things like ROHS (Reduction of Hazardous substances) in the electronic industry, lead (formerly used to make brass and steel easier to machine), and other materials are being substituted for things that are not known to cause health problems. So, as you mentioned, you could have old parts analyzed to find out the exact alloy, a more thorough analysis could probably determine the amount of cold work and tempering was involved in the production of the part. You would then have a recipe to exactly reproduce the old part. However, you won't find that material in a catalog and getting a manufacture to "cook you up" a batch would be quite cost prohibitive. At one point in my design career I asked a steel supplier about a custom thickness of tin plating for a steel part about 10 times the size of a reed plate. I needed 100,000 a month. They told me the quantity was way too low to make a custom batch economically viable.
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florida-trader
1008 posts
Sep 29, 2016
8:25 AM
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Nate: Leaded Brass is still available. It has not been outlawed.
STME58: Your point is well taken. Anything can be had if you are willing to spend the money. I have managed to figure out a way to commericalize the manufacturing of custom combs. Custom cover plates are next. After that, the Holy Grail is reed plates. I've done a lot of research about what it takes to manufacture reed plates. It ain't cheap, which is why so fe companies do it. The start-up costs are prohibitive. That said, it won't stop me from methodically plotting an inexorable course to get it done. The type of metal I would ultimately use is one piece of the puzzle. Therein lies my curiousity.
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Tom Halchak
www.BlueMoonHarmonicas.com
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Bilzharp
134 posts
Sep 29, 2016
8:47 AM
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A few years ago I read an online article about someone looking at the crystalline structure of the brass in Hohner reeds through the years with an electron microscope. I thought for sure it was Kinya Pollard but I can't find it on the Mel Bay site. I do remember there being visible differences, even in different eras of the prewar models. I'll keep looking for that article.
I think a lot of the perceived difference in sound is because of Just Intonation - the chords just sound so good. The brass might have something to do with it though. My mouse-ear prewar G seems more alive and resonant than any other harp I own. Not too good for 3rd position though.
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florida-trader
1009 posts
Sep 29, 2016
10:25 AM
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Bilzharp - I won't disagree with your premise about the tuning but I tune a lot of the pre-wars to Modern Compromise Tuning because that is better for today's style of play. However, I do get a lot of requests for 7-Limit Just Intonation. Either way, they play like butter.
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Tom Halchak
www.BlueMoonHarmonicas.com
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groyster1
2878 posts
Sep 29, 2016
10:44 AM
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@superbee.......as far as brass contributing to sound....probably not....but its just that these harps,many much older than me,play so well despite age and being played before.....probably some of that is the german harp builders skill.....as far as tuning I prefer the 7limit JI that these harps were tuned
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ridge
683 posts
Sep 29, 2016
12:00 PM
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I know ElkRiverHarmonicas (David Payne) long ago had a great post about metallurgy from the years before World War I and World War II and how many of these factories were destroyed or taken over.
My vague recollection was that the metal compositions were unique to different factories and much of that knowledge and process was lost as a result.
It probably comes down to the same thing I asked about a while ago. Why are crystal element mics so sought after? Surely somebody could still grow crystals the way they used to in order to get that same sound. I hypothesized, at the time, that there is probably some "Walter White" of piezoelectricity out there doing just that.
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Ridge's YouTube
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florida-trader
1010 posts
Sep 29, 2016
12:20 PM
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ridge - I find it difficult to believe that some secret recipe for brass was lost. Pretty much everything can be reverse engineered. However, it might be that the type of brass that was made back then is no longer commercially available becuase metallurgists have "progressed" and moved onto bigger and better things. As STME58 stated above, perhaps anyone looking to duplicate the pre-war reed plates would have to get someone to cook up a batch of brass for him. My guess is that it is doable but it might be prohibitively expensive. Remember, it doesn't make any sense to manufacture anything unless you know that people will actually buy it at a price that enables you to make a profit.
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Tom Halchak
www.BlueMoonHarmonicas.com
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barbequebob
3294 posts
Sep 29, 2016
12:27 PM
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From what I understand, there are some 500 different grades of brass and half of them haven't been made since just prior to WWII, and the one Hohner used, the legendary bell metal brass was one of them. Harmonica manufacturers, regardless of who they are and how many of them they make, just from an economic standpoint alone, don't use enough brass for many of the present manufacturers to manufacture that type of brass anymore. It's a lot more profitable for brass manufacturers to make brass for door knobs than it is for harmonicas as there is actually more brass used on them.
It's too bad that harmonica manufacturers didn't do what cymbol manufacturers like Zildjian did and have their own brass factories where they could have really tight control and ample supply of the brass they use.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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groyster1
2879 posts
Sep 29, 2016
2:52 PM
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thanks for all responses.....have a fire proof safe full of star of david harps.....they are so awesome
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