Todd Parrott
1382 posts
Apr 17, 2017
8:17 PM
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You guys who are chromatic players may find this interesting. It appears to be a custom chromatic made my Frank Huang. Is this the same kind that Frank Huang made for Stevie Wonder?
Custom Chromatic by Frank Huang
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Gnarly
2159 posts
Apr 17, 2017
9:56 PM
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"incredibly heavy", must be a brass comb.
I have certainly never seen anything like it.
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WinslowYerxa
1295 posts
Apr 18, 2017
4:21 AM
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I saw one of these at a SPAH convention around 1992, being sold for around $300; it was reported stolen from the sale table. It was incredibly heavy.
This one was built using pre-1955 64 reedplates and slider - you can see looking in the holes that it's straight tuned, and the box is of the pre-war type (but that box style was used into the early 1950s). Around 1955 Hohner changed its 64 to cross tuning.
Yes, that's the same Frank Huang, and the harps he built for Stevie were reputed to be like this one. Note the channels built into the covers, similar to the ones built into Cham-Ber Huang's CBH2016 model. Frank also tuned a CBH chromatic from C down to A for Norton Buffalo (who later became a Huang endorser when the Huang brothers left Hohner and went into business for themselves). He did the same thing to create a low A diatonic (long before such low harps existed) for Madcat from a Hohner 364 in low C.
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Winslow
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Last Edited by WinslowYerxa on Apr 18, 2017 4:22 AM
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Diggsblues
2097 posts
Apr 18, 2017
9:42 AM
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I remember when Frank was making custom Chromatics. One of my students had a four octave and a three octave and they where very heavy. I think they where brass with maybe copper plating and then nickle or chrome. He used old reed plates with the better reeds than the new Hohner's. They probably had custom valves to. I think the bodies where all hand machined.
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nacoran
9438 posts
Apr 18, 2017
10:29 AM
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Wasn't the one Frank Huang played silver? (Seem to remember reading that on Pat Missin's site.)
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Todd Parrott
1383 posts
Apr 18, 2017
11:06 AM
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Not sure about Frank's harp, but Cham-Ber Huang had a silver prototype of the CBH chromatic. There is a video of him discussing it on the NAMM site, but it appears at the moment that the NAMM site is down.
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WinslowYerxa
1296 posts
Apr 18, 2017
2:06 PM
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Cham-Ber's was a 12-hole, and it had the slide button on the left side instead of the right. Back in China he had learned on one built that way, evidently made by mistake and then shipped off to a place far, far away. After that he always had his harps custom made that way.
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Winslow
Check out my blog and other goodies at winslowyerxa.com
Harmonica For Dummies, Second Edition with tons of new stuff
Join us in 2017 for SPAH in Tulsa!
Last Edited by WinslowYerxa on Apr 18, 2017 2:07 PM
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sydeman
190 posts
Apr 18, 2017
8:16 PM
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That NAMM video is here
https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/cham-ber-huang
Last Edited by sydeman on Apr 18, 2017 8:23 PM
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