bluesharper
129 posts
Aug 23, 2010
12:38 PM
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How would i go about half valving a chromatic. I know Brendan knows about half valving chroms. So anyone on the forum who knows about that could you tell me what reed to take the valves off.
But wait theres more!!
What is the advantages with half valving a chrom' and what are the disadvantages?
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Greg Heumann
719 posts
Aug 23, 2010
12:57 PM
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half valving a chrom lets you bend the draw notes. Here's what Brendan told me:
"CX12
The outside valves are the valves on the outside of the reedplates; the ones you can see when you look at the internal unit of the CX12. They affect the DRAW reeds. The inside valves are the ones hidden inside, only visible when you look into the front of the com. They affect the BLOW reeds.
Don't touch the inside valves. Just remove the outside ones from the odd numbered reeds on each plate, on hole 1,3,5,7,9 (11 already has no valve). That means two valves per 'hole'. The easy way is to look at hole 11 and copy that format for all the other odd numbered holes down the range.
Hope that makes sense. After you remove the valve you will see the blow reeds sitting beneath the plate. Reduce their gaps to the minimum that will work with a strong breath."
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/Greg
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AC
18 posts
Aug 23, 2010
1:19 PM
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Before answering the question here's a little background on the subject:
You might notice that on any harmonica with a shared chamber for blow and draw reeds the higher tuned reed will sound more full and it is bendable using "regular" (for lack of a better word) bending technique. The lower tuned reed however does not sound as full. The idea behind half valving is that by doing so you keep the ability to bend the higher tuned reeds but get a more full sound out of the lower tuned ones (and also enable the lower tuned reeds for valve bending). You will lose the ability to overblow/overdraw.
On a typical higher end Chromatic all reeds will be valved. You can do valve bends on each reed (but you can not do "regular" (there's gotta be a better word for this) blues bends on the higher tuned reeds. However loss of air is minimized.
To make a half valved Chromatic you need to remove valves. What you want to do is leave the valves that are on the same reed slots as the higher tuned reed (so it will minimize airloss on the lower tuned reeds). This is rather easy on most Chromatics. On my Hohners and Suzuki's (I'm talking a standard tuning 12 hole Chromatics) I just take the cover plates off and remove the first three valves, leave the fourth on, then remove the next three, leave the eight on. I do this on the top (without taking the reedplates off)of both the top and the bottom plate.
That's really all you have to do. You could remove the reedplates and take off the fourth and eight hole valves from the inside of the reedplate but you won't gain much there in terms of bending because it's only a half step in between notes.
There is also only a half step in between notes on the 2nd and 6th holes and some people prefer to leave those valves on as well (on both sides).
Advantages: You will be able to do "regular" bends and make diatonic-like sounds on the Chromatic. Also there are less valves to deal with - always a good thing :)
Disadvantages: the instrument will be less air tight - and that's already an issue with some Chromatics. You also won't be able to do valved bends on all holes.
I think it's definitely a trade-off and I'm not sold on playing only half valved or only fully valved. You should try both and see which one you like better - or which one you could use in different situations.
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jim
339 posts
Aug 24, 2010
12:47 AM
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if you have an acrylic body on the chromatic - like on the seydel chromDeluxe - the loss of air will be minimal. (you'll need a good mouthpiece as well)
on chromonicas, don't even try taking off the valves.
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www.truechromatic.com
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bluesharper
132 posts
Aug 24, 2010
3:23 AM
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What about cx 12's?
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