He retired a couple of years ago as their product manager and he played a big role in helping to turn around the Hohner quality for the better. I had written a long complaint letter to Hohner in 1995 and within 2 weeks, he called me and we spent a good two hours on the phone explaining what was happening and what changes I was going to see. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
I figure Richard Sleigh would suggest you use his draw scraper to do this. Can it be done with just a regular file that you would use to tune reeds?
Last Edited by on Jun 11, 2010 11:38 AM
I don't quite understand what he's doing with the screwdriver? If he's sharpening it, he's not really doing so at an angle... Is he using that cornered-off surface to scrape the reed?
In regards to what Tinus is doing, is he actually scraping off brass or is he just pushing it out of the way? Because that's the difference between embossing and chamfering. According to those Harp-L posts, the slot should be embossed (and not chamfered) and the reed should be chamfered (not embossed).
Is that another one of Buddhas (unvoiced and mysterious) criticisms about these videos?
WTF did people do before all this stuff was discovered ??
Oh yes, play the best the harp that has ever been played. eg Little Walter, Sonny Boy, Big Walter etc etc
If I want to be louder, I turn the amp up, or play harder!!
If I need to play in a different key, I change harps.
If I need to play chromatically I play.... guess.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I've heard all my life about the good old days, they didn't exist.
Todays technology is the best its been. manufacturing tolerances are the tightest.
Plus, digital tuners, the internet, everyone knows how to set up a harp and how to play, DVD, youtube, its never been easier.
What it boils down to is the modern player who lives in this digital age where everything is immediate and available expects the same in their harp playing.
Well, its not quite like that !!
Expect at least 10 years playing before you're any good! Regardless if you chamfer or not.
"7LJI: From what I've read, they don't make harps like they used to... They didn't need to improve out-of-the-box harps back then."
I think old harps have been romanticized, but the old players weren't overblowing them either. I suspect harps today are WAY better than the harps of old. They benefit form years of evolution in both design production techniques. Old harps ALL had unsealed, wood combs that swelled and screwed up the harp.
the old harps were very close to the customs you can get today. I've played some of the harps from the 20s and 30s that Filisko had sitting around his shop and they were amazing. I didn't believe at the time they were untouched by Joe.
Joe started building harps, not to make them better but rather to restore them to what they used to be. That reason alone is why he chose marine bands for his base harps, the MBs is definitive harmonica in out minds. Chances are, when anybody thinks of harmonica, it's the Marine Band that is pictured in their head.
In Filisko's early days of he was trying to be more progressive, he made brass combs with special chambers designed to get the most volume and tone, he made special cover plates and he used Lee Oskar Plates. In fact the first set of tools he gave me in 1992 was for Lee Oskars not Hohners.
Anyway, those old Marine Bands were awesome and still nothing today other than a well set up custom harp can compare.
I have one MB built in 1937. And it is true - these were outstanding! They are likecustom stuff, if you do not play advanced overblows, you wouldn't need to ever tweak them. For advanced overblowers they offer a lot as well First of all their tone is totally different. They are louder, and the sound is more... vivid?
The one I've got has never been opened before me. And yet it was in perfectly in tune! After 70years... I would buy more prewar stuff but fucking ebay has a broken registration module so I cannot register there((
The fork reed is weird... Is that to make more damage when swallowed? :D ---------- www.truechromatic.com
Last Edited by on Jun 11, 2010 11:36 PM
It's no real surprise that pre-war harps are better than new ones. Simply because the manufacturing process was more manual and a lot more time was spent on quality control. Back in those days workers had pride in their work and the bosses were less profit obsessed than today. This was pretty much the case up to the 1950's and early 1960's.
If you look at products from that era they are far superior than todays products for the most part. This is evident in many areas today. Cars, motorcycles, mics, amps and many electrical goods from the 50's and 60's can still be found in fairly abundant amounts. Of course many are in the hands of collectors who have nurtured them, but then so many are simply in daily use by people who use them because they work and have no interest in the collectable value of these items. The fact that they can still be in daily use is of course a testament to the workmanship involved it their production.
The level of workmanship that was pretty much the common currency in the past history of manufacturing is now only really seen in the work of people who make "custom" items. For the harmonica world that's people like Greg Heumann, Brian Purdy, Sonny Jr, Joe Spiers, Chris Michalek and Dick Sjoeberg to name just a few.
By the way. That forked reed is from an accordion I believe.
Last Edited by on Jun 12, 2010 1:19 AM
"This is evident in many areas today. Cars, motorcycles, mics, amps and many electrical goods from the 50's and 60's can still be found in fairly abundant amounts."
Can't agree with this Kingley.
How often do you hear cars not starting in cold damp conditions? It was common place 20 years ago.
Engines had to be run in, and have the oil changed for summer and winter conditions.
Cars have never been built better. They have anti corrosion warranties lasting up to 10 years.
In my youth I was forever spraying WD40 all over the electrical components of the ignition system. Getting jump and tow starts.
I used to race in the classic saloon car championships. A BMW 2002.
The Beemer was a well built car, but couldn't hold a candle against almost any modern car for finish and longevity.
@ arzajac Please accept my apologies. I was generalising and the statement was not directed specifically at you. ---------- Those Dangerous Gentlemens Myspace Youtube
Due to cutbacks,the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off.
Man, everything is sooo relative: in st.Petersburg, during winter you can see people with a lamp (how do you call that thing for heating up things with fire, built like a lamp?) - heating up the rims and the engine, because it won't start up :D
And you surely change oil for summer/winter season in -30 -40C (-22 -40F)!
the anti-corrosion will hardly last 5years there, because the road is covered with some chemical shit to make the snow melt.
That's the situation in Finland too, Jim. Salt in the roads eats up cars very fast. And the new cars don't start up as well as e.g. old Lada's.. ;)
Actually old Mercedes-Benz's are still sold with good price just beacuse they outlast the newer cars easily. You can have old Benz with 600 000 km in the meter and it's still good. Newer cars start to be garbage in 200-300 000km. And not just the engine but the body too. So it depends on what part of the cars you think about.
I have one prewar Hohner octave harp (from the 30's) that was originally my great-grandfather's harp and then my grandfather played it for decades after him. It's still in good condition - no reeds changed or nothing. I wouldn't even imagine that some of my diatonic harps would last even 10 years without reedwork.
lucky bastard :))) Your harp has quite a history behind it. I mean, when objects have their story to tell, they become more than just things... They get soul.
If I remember correctly, the fork style reed is something that Rick Epping was working on for an accordian.
I champher all my reeds on harps lower than C. I think it makes a big difference, but you have to have the right technique, or you can screw up the reed. Go easy, and when you do it right, you have a little curl of brass come off the reed edge. Don't do it too much.
a couple of year ago, I figured that is one side of a champhered reed was so good, then two sides would be better, so I removed all the reeds from an old MS, and champhered both sides. It blew really easy, but sounded like crap. It had no character at all.
The embossing technique is one that Rick borrowed from accordion makers and applied it to harmonica.
I'm in complete agreeement with Buddha when it comes to the old harps and I have several pre-WWII Marine Bands that give total creedence to that, including one made circ 1900 and a custom is the closest thing to it by a wide margin.
A number of harmonica factories in the last 25 years switched paying their production line workers from an hourly wage to piece work to get product out a lot faster and the more you put out, the more money you make, but too often, quality suffers BADLY and in Hohner's really worst years 1981-1995, when they went that way, their quality dropped pretty drastically.
Much of the technology in the manufacturing process has largely been, for the most part, unchanged since the late 1800's and many of the dies wear out, sharpening blades for wood combs were often not resharpened frequently enough and the wood was often not aged properly.
The reed work back then was far better because they weren't pushing them out as rapidly as they are doing now and the kind of reed work you get out of a custom is not something you push thru on a production line in 10 minutes or less, not even remotely close and good hand labor still beats out robotics for that to this day.
Automotive technology is a far different animal than it is for harmonicas or musical instruments in general. Why is a Stradivarious still the gold standard for a violin, especially one hundreds of years old? Why is a Martin still, especially an older Martin the gold standard for acoustic guitars? Those are all hand labor intensive and having a factory using robotics or whatever you want to call it spitting out 1000 harmonicas in an hour is ALWAYS gonna have a pretty fair amount of quality that's gonna suffer and for these companies, the kind of hand labor needed to pull this off correctly takes far too much time and is too costly in terms of labor costs. Hell, at Hohner, they only allow 5 minutes GRAND TOTAL for tuning an individual harmonica and nothing else more, and with that little amount of time just to do that using the comprimise tunings, there still exists an enormous amount of inconsistency from harp to harp when you only spend a grand total of 5 minutes per instrument and your production line quota is 1000 harmonicas++++ per hour. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
"How often do you hear cars not starting in cold damp conditions? It was common place 20 years ago"
7LimitJi - Yes I'd agree with you there.
However cars being better nowadays are more a result of technological advances. Really though I was referring to the general quality of workmanship in things today compared to the 1950's and 60's.
Last Edited by on Jun 14, 2010 11:08 AM
@Baker. Champhering does change the tuning, but not as much as you might think. You are taking metal off both ends of the reeds, so it sort of balances out. Still, you will have to retune the harp. Personally, I check tuning every time I do anything to a harp, including cleaning.
I bet if harmonicas were as big business as microprocessors they'd get the bugs in machine manufacture worked out pretty quickly. Chip fab plants cost a couple billion dollars to build, and they have to be retooled every few years. I bet that's more than three orders of magnitude more than what Harrison has spent. I high end lithographic printing machine that makes computer chips could probably be reprogrammed to make awesome reeds, but there wouldn't be enough demand to cover the cost of retooling. What scale are harp tolerances measured in? Computer chips are measure in nanometers!
I also wonder with old harps if they were all that good or if maybe the lousy harps just got thrown out. The ones that are around now may well be more custom. On an open backed harp you can do reed work without opening things up. Or I guess, maybe they just spent more time on each one, or maybe the lead in the old reads makes them play better. I'd take a brand new car over a 20 year old car, but I got a 23 year old car and it runs, so I'm not complaining.
The brass that was used back then was a big factor, and that brass hasn't been made since prior to WWII and it was made by small factories, and the vast majority of those small factories have been pretty much history since then. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
