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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Latest Hohner handmade reeds/profiles
Latest Hohner handmade reeds/profiles
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9000
47 posts
Nov 28, 2010
6:26 PM
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As I recall the reeds and reed profiles changed on the MB and Special 20 harmonicas a year or more ago. I remember a lot of controversy on the various forums at that time comparing the new with the old. I havn't needed to purchase any of these harps in that time and I'm wondering what the consensus is on the new reeds in regard to out of the box bendability, longevity, tone, etc.
All the best,
Jay
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9000
48 posts
Nov 29, 2010
2:18 PM
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Wow! Did I really find a topic for which no one has an opinion?
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MP
1059 posts
Nov 29, 2010
5:23 PM
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i bought an MB last july and sent it to a well reguarded customizer who posts here at MBH frequently.
since he told me to buy a MB 1896 i would imagine they can't be horrible.
i know players that have bought new SP/20s within the last year and i don't think they even noticed if the profiles were changed. but then again they probably don't even care what a profile is either. so...... in other words, no one i know has complained.
i think someone mentioned the new GMs aren't any good though.
you should start a new thread poseing the question directly at Buddha or harpwrench.
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MP
hibachi cook for the yakuza
doctor of semiotics
superhero emeritus
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htownfess
218 posts
Nov 29, 2010
8:29 PM
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It can depend on what batch a given harp came from. The only way you can be reasonably sure that yours is the good Hohner stuff that someone reputable is talking about is to find out whom they bought it from and order there promptly. Even then, with less commonly used keys/models, there's a lag in the pipeline for obvious reasons. Go to someplace with faster harp turnover like Rockin' Ron's or Coast to Coast if you want more recent production. IIRC, divergent opinions were expressed in the same week and that can indicate the possibility that different guys got different generations of reedplates. If it can happen with B-Radicals. . . .
I think the Hohner handmades have gotten to the point where if you can gap and tune a little, you will have a harmonica many of us would have been happy to have in 2000 and ecstatic about in 1990.
MP, IIRC is "if I recall correctly," which happens with decreasing frequency these days :)
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MP
1061 posts
Nov 30, 2010
8:52 AM
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htownfess! howzit! i had a hell of a time guessing FWIW and AFAIK. as you see, i do not text.
cheers.
PS. ditto on rockin' rons.. he is the best dealer i've ever come across, period. i like coast to coast, but they appear to be a larger operation and therefore you don't get the cell phone follow-up call. even so, they're good.
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MP
hibachi cook for the yakuza
doctor of semiotics
superhero emeritus
Last Edited by on Nov 30, 2010 8:58 AM
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joshnat
86 posts
Nov 30, 2010
5:32 PM
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I posted a question about MB Deluxe to Harp-L about 18 months ago and Steve Baker responded saying the reed profiles of the handmade harps were a couple of years old at that time. I remember reading a post from Dave Payne saying he was having trouble getting his setups to stick with the new profiles. Maybe unrelated. Anyway, I ended up buying a bunch of MB Deluxes and they lasted longer than any harps I had had up to that point or since. Including Manjis, MB Crossovers, and Seydel Solists. YMMV.
More importantly, 9000, is your username in reference to a certain classic Swedish automobile I wish I had never sold?
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9000
49 posts
Dec 01, 2010
4:20 AM
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@ joshnat: yep! I've got 2 of them and a great mechanic who keeps them roadworthy for me. Unfortunately, they'll both be used up at some point. There are no more decent examples to be purchased at anything like a reasonable price,so..........
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chromaticblues
351 posts
Dec 01, 2010
11:42 AM
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Hohner made what changes they made in 2005. I wouldn't doubt that there are still some of the pre 2005 harps and replacement reedplates on shelves here and there.
As far as the new harps go. They seem to be easier to bend and last longer! I don't know how they did it, but they sure got it right this time. 10 years ago I did the same work on my harps that I do now and they were never this easy to play. I always had a hard time getting them were I couldn't hear air through my amp. One would be fine and the next was unplayable and unmodifiable. I remeber having a hard time getting them consistant. I would buy a dozen harps, take them apart and go thru the reedplates and some of them I threw in the garbage because they were so bad! I see alot less of that, but the playability is really changed. The Crossovers are so easy to play after I lightly modify them. There has never been a harp like that! The Manji is the only thing I compare to it. Having said that I'd play a SP 20 before playing the Manji. Not OOTB, but with some mods the SP 20 is a great harp now. 15 years ago you had a better chance of pulling rabbit out of your ass than finding a great SP 20. As a matter a fact a couple weeks ago I worked on a SP 20 for someone that bought it about 20 years ago he said and it was unplayable so he put it in shoe box. He saw the post I had about fixing peoples harp that were unplayable so he sent it to me. I worked on that harp for 6 hours and I could make a new SP 20 better (or I should say easier to play) by just gapping and setting the reeds. That harp had a very different tone than new SP 20's. The reeds seemed stiffer and it had a nice mellow relaxed tone. The half dozen or so old Marine Bands that I have bought were all bad! Some worse than others, but none of them worth keeping in my harp case. If I'm not going to play them what good are they? Luckily I never spent much on them so it wasn't a big deal. My wife has a good friend that owns an antique store that gives me old harp. I was all excited when she told me that, but nothing has panned out yet. I've bought a few of Ebay with the same result.
Either I have really bad luck and there is a guy some where that gets nothing but good old harps. Or Hohner makes better harps now.
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barbequebob
1452 posts
Dec 02, 2010
9:56 AM
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The change in Hohner quality actually began in late 1995 when they began retooling and this was all after the last living Hohner, Frank Hohner, was no longer a part of the company, and he basically was driving it into the ground with his excessive lifestyle and when their quality took a huge dive from 1980-1995, they weren't ereally concentrating on harmonicas much because their biggest selling and most profitable instrument was a keyboard instrument called the CLavinet, ironically, made very popular by harmonica great Stevie Wonder, who featured it prominently on two of his 70's hits, Superstition and Higher Ground, and this I got directly from Rick Epping in a 2 hour phone call I had with him in 1995.
They've really had to improve things a lot because Hohner hasn't had this much REAL competition with so many really good OOTB harps since prior to WWII. Hohner still has an 85% market share in the US, but from after WWII until the mid 80's, it was damned close to 98%.
Very few of their harps are still being made in their Trossingen factory, and much of it is either in China or in another factory in Germany as well as one in the Czech Republic.
The slot tolerances since 1996 have defintitely been much tighter than they had been in that awful period 1980-1995 and some people's memories of Hohner as their first harps with bad luck with them really are stemming from the stuff in their bad quality years I mentioned. I know for a fact that a Hohner in the 60's & 70's are far better harps than from 1980-1995 and the present stock has been their best stock in decades.
Disclaimer: I do NOT work for, nor do I have endorsement deals with ANY harp maker, customizer, retailer, distributor, etc..
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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