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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Axe Love
Axe Love
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wolfkristiansen
51 posts
Oct 14, 2010
3:20 PM
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Axe love-- I occasionally read posts about, for want of a better term, good looking harmonicas, be they off the shelf or custom made. Or I see photos of a beautifully made harmonica with a loving focus on its beauty through lighting and background.
Harmonicas are sound producing devices, not sculptures. The only things I care about in a harmonica are playability and sound. Looks mean nothing.
Dealing with a typical diatonic-- When your hands engulf that 4 inch piece of metal, there's not much harp on display. It doesn't matter what it looks like, to the audience. They are, after all, an audience: not spectators.
A well used harp, like a well used amp, shows its wear, if anybody should care to look. It's a good thing. "This harp has made lots of sweet music!" Fingerprints from your sweaty fingers, darkening where your lips most often touch the harp-- all are inevitable with long term use. Even a pretty harp turns homely after a while, if you're a player.
That said, I too admire a beautiful harmonica. But, when I contemplate a harmonica purchase, I don't give its looks much if any weight.
Cheers,
LeVitraRolex
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Joe_L
706 posts
Oct 14, 2010
7:43 PM
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I agree. I don't really look at them. I play them. When I am playing them, the harp is almost completely lost, unless it's a big diatonic or chromatic.
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The Blues Photo Gallery
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Greg Heumann
812 posts
Oct 14, 2010
8:51 PM
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I agree. A great harp doesn't have to look great. But there's no reason a great piece of gear can't ALSO be beautiful. I'm thinking about wood mics......
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/Greg
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htownfess
192 posts
Oct 14, 2010
9:49 PM
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I see your point, Wolf. I think it's different, though, if one seriously customizes harps oneself, because then you think about completely working over the harp aesthetically--you really do consider sight, touch, taste and smell as well as sound if you're sealing your own Marine Band combs, for example. Bear in mind that Joe Filisko had a huge influence on this over the past two decades by being such a fastidious and aesthetically thorough pioneer of customizing. When he started sealing combs and smoothing edges and reshaping coverplates on MBs, he was driven to make it all nice to look at and distinctive in appearance as well as function. A whole bunch of people who work on harps for themselves or others have been influenced by those standards, and anybody who goes commercial with customizing tries to make a harp that looks nicer in the pictures on their website, though spiffy looks are not essential to playing function.
It reminds me of car customizing--you can build a rat rod strictly for go, or you can build a gorgeous rod whose engine bay looks nicer than the outside of most cars. Or you could build mostly for show and hardly drive the sucker. I appreciate the rat rod aesthetic, but one of the rites of passage of sealing MB combs was that moment where one thinks, jeez, I'm doing all this #$%& sanding and drilling and tapping already, I might as well make the sucker look really nice while I'm at it, and personalize its looks while I'm at it.
Some of my harps are rat rods and some are show & go. But after repairing some Filisko and Missin harps early on, I decided that the customized inside could look as nice (relatively speaking) as the customized outside might, and that was a good aesthetic standard to shoot for if I had time to achieve it at all. Similar deal to the race mechanics all knowing who's got the cleanest cars or bikes or boats on the grid. If you take pride in your mechanical work, that pride often is manifested in making it look nice.
Something like the aesthetic of your live performance: one might think about what the audience is seeing and consciously address that, or just focus strictly on the sounds coming out, and both could get over with the audience--but some prefer addressing the complete aesthetic if they can.
Somebody who pays more for a custom harp probably wants the extra $ to show if possible. That dovetails nicely with builders' pursuit of visual excellence. Or it may simply help one recognize a specific harp at a glance, like Todd Parrott's lineup.
Stock harps usually are more utilitarian in appearance. A Crossover looks like they took some trouble to make it look pleasing and distinctive, and don't you think that's the custom influence? Maybe a Pure Harp or a Hering 1923 too.
"Primitive cultures" who don't have much material stuff often seem to have more aesthetically pleasing everyday tools than we do. Harps of a century ago look better to me than current ones, maybe busier/more ornate but looking like something made for someone who didn't own a gross of the things or however many it is I have, maybe someone who owned just one and was grateful to afford even that. Something like a prewar harp seems invested with that energy to me. It was a different time and objects from then often show attention to visual aesthetics, whether it's to my taste or not.
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MP
916 posts
Oct 15, 2010
9:23 AM
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i've kept an original non MS meisterklasse in it's box for over 20 years cuz it's too pretty to play.
looks like it was made by BMW.
took it out a few months back and didn't care for it's sound. i even swapped herring MB plates to give it some air.
still no likey.
replaced original covers .
it still lives in it's box.
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MP
hibachi cook for the yakuza
doctor of semiotics
superhero emeritus
Last Edited by on Oct 15, 2010 9:23 AM
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