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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Hohner long life reeds
Hohner long life reeds
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REM
179 posts
Feb 11, 2012
1:14 PM
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Todd Parrott has mentioned a few time that one of his Hohner harps (I think it was a pre-MS Pro Harp)had reeds that seemed to last forever, and it had "Hohner Long Life" stamped onto the cover plate. He was pretty sure that there was, in fact, something different about the reeds to make them last a long time.
Well last night I was reading through Douglas Tate's out of print "Make Your Harmonicas Play Well" book. And in the section on reeds it said "There are two main types, the standard and a much softer version used to make 'long life' reeds". So apparently Hohner really did use to make a "long life" reed made out of a softer type of brass.
Todd, other than the fact that these reeds have a much longer life span, how do they play performance wise in comparison to the standard reeds? If they perform as well as the standard reeds, I wonder why they would stop producing them. I guess one possibility is that they could no longer get the specific type of brass that they used. I know at one point hohner switched from a yellow brass to a red brass (or maybe vice versa), and a lot of people and customisers will tell you that the old brass was superior (in fact I think Joe Spiers use to use these older reeds in his stage 3 customs because they performed better for overblows). A lot of people wanted Hohner to switch back to this other brass, but the reason they switched in the first place was because the manufacturer stopped producing that specific type of brass.
I wonder if this is what happened to the "long life" reeds. Or maybe they just decided they didn't want to keep making 2 different kind of reeds and decided to keep the standard reeds so people have to replace there harmonicas on a regular basis, because the reeds blow out quicker.
Last Edited by on Feb 11, 2012 1:14 PM
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Todd Parrott
838 posts
Feb 11, 2012
5:00 PM
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All I can say for sure is that those old pre-MS cross harps did last forever, though Steve Baker says I just got lucky. Yet, it did have the words "Hohner long-life" stamped on the bottom cover. I'm really not sure what the differences were with the reeds.
Funny thing is, the old Cross Harp had thicker reed plates, which supposedly makes it harder on the reeds, making them fatigue much faster than normal, but this wasn't the case in my experience, and I was a hard player back then.
I should dig these old harps out of the graveyard and have Joe take a look at them. Perhaps he could give us a better analysis, certainly better than I.
I'd have to play them again to see how they compare, but I remember loving them.
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Diggsblues
1176 posts
Feb 12, 2012
7:46 AM
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I've heard that the formula for hohner reeds has changed over the years. Even the rolling process of the brass sheets. I've heard tell that there was moreprecious metals in them that made them a softer reed
with more tensile strength. That would make it last longer.
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Emile "Diggs" D'Amico a Legend In His Own Mind
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