electricwitness
18 posts
Jan 28, 2012
7:13 PM
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Today was my first real excursion into harp repair. It was a good day!
Tuned a Blues harp and returned it to a playable condition, and replaced a reed in my Marine Band! The blues harp was pretty straight forward, the MB was major surgery!
I only have one MB so I didn't have any direct replacement parts. I found a pro harp with that already had a broken reed and the rivets seemed to be the correct size. As a side note the newer blues harps that I have use a bigger rivet than the older ones... interesting. The reed I removed from the Pro harp, 5 draw same as the the marine band and the same key, was longer and wider. So much for a straight across swap! So I had to narrow the reed and shorten it. Then I couldn't get it to re-rivet back together, I shortened a reed plate screw from the pro harp to mount the reed instead of the rivet. It took some serious tweaking to get it to work, and at one point I doubted it was going to work at all, but all is good now! It is as good as new.
I also worked on two other harps, one had a cracked reed, so it went into the spare parts box. The other had a flat note I tuned it up and then reassembled it. During the test drive the note went flat again on the first bend. Tried to bend it again and the it went flatter. I took it back apart again and found the reed was cracked right at the base, so it also went into the parts box.
I figured I saved my self about $100 dollars by repairing these two harps. Now to work on the others in the pile of "dead harps". I gathered a bunch of them up and found about a dozen harps that I don't think will take much work to get them going again.
Not sure why it took me so long to start learning this stuff. I do all my own auto mechanic work, and that has saved me a boat load of money over the years. So I guess it's about time, in more than one way. haha
Just thought I would share this harmonica adventure with group.
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electricwitness.com
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