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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! > Seydel Harmonicas
Seydel Harmonicas
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Tom585
132 posts
Jan 27, 2022
9:07 AM
Does anyone know when Seydel harmonicas began being sold in the United States? I had never heard of them and then, sometime after Germany was reunited, they were commonly sold here. My guess is about 2005ish. Am I close?

Were they sold in the US before World War II?
Thanks.

Tom
barbequebob
3669 posts
Jan 28, 2022
8:16 AM
To the best of my knowledge, Seydel was never sold under its own name in the US until sometime around 2005-2007. In the mid 70's, the Seydel family had been forced out of ownership by the then Communist East Germany, which forbid private ownership of anything and they did import a series of diatonics and chromatics under the Bandmaster name and I still have some old Guitar Player magazines with ads for these harps where they claimed on the ads, "Just as good as Hohner but at half the price."

After the fall of the Communist Party in East Germany, ownership went back to the Seydel family, but the Communists left the company in shambles and eventually they wound up going bankrupt.

Bushman in the early 2000's had harps made for them under that brand name with the model Soul's Voice and shortly afterward, Seydel was sold and a massive investment was made and now they're doing quite well.
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nacoran
10390 posts
Jan 28, 2022
12:49 PM
They have a pretty neat history page on their site.

https://www.seydel1847.de/About-us/en/History

I looked up some more at one point. Out of the group of companies that they were merged with in their time in East Germany they were the only one that made it out as a harmonica company, although a couple of the other companies are still around, and at least one still is in the music business. I think my search basically went from Seydel's history page to wikipedia, and then I googled each of the other companies they were merged with.

Basically, if you were a German harmonica company your company history usually goes one of two ways... doing business, and then suddenly bought out by Hohner, or doing business, and then merged into one company in Eastern Germany- with the twist ending either being Seydel and getting back to being an independent harmonica company, or not making harmonicas anymore.

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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
Tom585
133 posts
Jan 29, 2022
8:21 AM
Thanks, Bob and Nate.

I see Bandmaster harmonicas for sale on the web and some references to them being pre-1980. Together with the magazine ads you saw, Bob, can I assume these harmonicas were being shipped from communist East Germany to the US, or some other western country?

By the way, my purpose for wanting this information is for a class I teach about the harmonica and the blues including the history of each.
barbequebob
3671 posts
Jan 31, 2022
9:08 AM
Most would be from East Germany but made after WWII. There are Bandmasters made prior to this but I don't have info about that off the top of my head at the moment. They also had a 12 hold chromatic model as well.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Tom585
134 posts
Feb 12, 2022
8:25 AM
There were some echo/tremolo style harps with the name bandmaster on them, too, Bob.
nacoran
10392 posts
Feb 12, 2022
11:32 AM
They had a presence in Australia with their Boomerang harps.

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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
SuperBee
7051 posts
Feb 12, 2022
12:37 PM
Yeah in the 30s they were selling in Australia but I think the deal was with Alberts music and the units might have borne J. Albert & son rather than Seydel branding. There were some replicas made of these models, boomerangs but also more conventional types. I think the boomerang replicas were in the mid 00s and maybe ok but the more conventional harps were maybe a decade earlier and they were not much chop.
I have a half dozen chromatics, GDR era or immediately post GDR ie probably late 80s or early 90s. The name is not Seydel but Vermona and I think the product line is Weltmeister. They look nice, from a distance. Very terrible harmonicas up close. I would not bother trying to restore one.
I’ve read sometimes about how Seydel took a risky decision to invest in steel reeds, and I’m not saying that isn’t true. The other side of that decision would be to not invest and just go broke or fold, because the product was really very poor and the business would definitely fail if they didn’t make radical changes.
Todd Parrott
1527 posts
Feb 12, 2022
8:25 PM
They were sold around 2000-2001 under the Weltmeister brand name, but these were made by Seydel and had the same factory address as Seydel printed on the packaging. Frederic Yonnet was an early endorser at that time and appeared in some of their advertising materials (now endorses Seydel). He was playing the Weltmeister Blackbird at the time. I have a few of those in some of the odd keys and high keys such as high Ab and high A. They offered a few other models as well, including one with green cover plates which Coast to Coast music used to sell when they were still in business. I'm assuming the name changed to Seydel around the time that Seydel was purchased around 2004 or so. Rupert Oysler would know for sure.
WinslowYerxa
1747 posts
Feb 18, 2022
1:36 PM
In the late 1990s they were marketed in the US by Weltmeister, an East German accordion manufacturer. I remember them being at the winter NAMM show as part of a consortium of East German music manufacturers. They had a Bluebird model that gained some traction.

Then, a few years later, it was "revealed" that the Weltmeister diatonics were, in fact, being manufactured by this other hitherto unknown company called Seydel. And at that point the post-iron-curtain story of Seydel started to unfold and the Weltmeister name faded from the world of harmonicas, though they still are a significant presence in the world of accordions.
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