Amazing that TNF has achieved a legendary status of sorts here. I almost made my tagline "What's a good cheap harp?" but thought I'd better not ;-)
As for being overwhelmed wuith harp choices - not me at this point. After dabbling with a few different 'not so cheap' harps I found my comfort zone with SP20's.
---------- Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy. -Dan Castellaneta
hey have you seen the new hohner harp due out 1st of the year,called blue morning or something,they had it mentioned on facebook ,but it didnt tell much about it.
Well, yes. I get a little overwhelmed by the volume of choices. I wish I had more budget to try ALL the various brands...but on the other hand, choice is good. The industry is thriving, I would assume, and this is cool.
I also become overwhelmed by the variety of playing styles and how good many, many players are, and get a little discouraged thinking I'll never get my playing up to where I want it to be.
But, I usually come back to just enjoying all the choice, all the players, and the process of learning, selecting harps, gradually improving, etc.
Choice of harp can be quite a task, you're right. I'm pretty new to the forum, but I find it incredibly helpful on a range of subjects. It's like having a huge pool of harmonica experience to swim through and get useful data...harp choices among them. Different players have different goals for their playing and there seems to be a harp for everyone.
Anyway, thanks Harmonicanick, for expressing this as I have felt this many times, myself.
When it comes to this stuff, I am blissfully ignorant. I've seen great players play crappy harps, through crappy equipment and sound great doing it. After trying all sorts of stuff, a friend of mine told me a story.
He had some harp players bugging him to sit in. A couple of them said, 'I can make you sound better.' His response was, 'the only thing that's going to make me sound better is more practice.'
After years of trying a variety of equipment, I began to realize that the sound comes from the player. This was never more evident to me than when RJ Mischo was hosting a local jam. Some nights there were six or seven harp players in the house. They all played through RJ's equipment and they all sounded different.
In my opinion, equipment may make you feel more confident, but it isn't going to turn a lousy player into the second coming of Little Walter Jacobs.
I will try new harps. Some I dig, others I don't. There some qualities about some harps that I really dig and other qualities I hate, but no one has. Ever come up to me and said, 'you would sound better, if you played better harps.'
My time is better spent trying to play what I have better and learning new tunes. No harmonica or piece of gear is going to do that for me.
i saw it, hobo. you could enter a drawing to win a free one, but you had to give access to all your info to some site. i wasnt about to do that. it looks like it could be a lower grade harp. at least to me. when they give it a blue comb and call it a cutesy name, i was thinking it could be another piedmont.
as for choices... ya gotta love it. or would you rather there only be the marine band? there are enough complaints about one of the most well known harps as it is. that's with ALL these other choices. imagine how boring all the forums would be, also, if we only had one harp to debate?
"i'm new. could someone..." "marine band." "but i want to play..." "marine band." "but i need a har..." MARINE BAND!!"
@Joe_l - Gindick jam camp, 20or 23 players rotating through the same amp and mic. If that don't convince you it ain't the equipment nothing will. moose. ---------- MBH Webbrain FerretCat Webbrain
Different brands are worth trying anyway. Different tunings are abig problem for me now. I play richter diatonic for 10 years and solo chromatic for 7 years. And I feel bunch of disadvantages of these layouts, but I don't have enough time to keep practicing regular tunings along with something new (diminished, powerbender, some more ideas about tunings).
---------- Excuse my bad English. Click on my photo or my username for my music.
Last Edited by on Dec 04, 2010 9:04 PM
It feels like an amazing time to be playing (such a wealth of teaching materials, previously unheard of access to professionals, variety of harps, customizing etc..). And all of this is balanced with the hectic pace of life, time commitments to family, work etc and possible financial woes.
My confusion isn't really based around the number of available Richter tuned harps (be it the newer models; manji, crossover etc, or that I've never played a special 20 or a Seydel) . What is spinning me out at present is what feel like the larger choices;
Richter tuned diatonic Richter tuned diatonic played chromatically using overbends Valves, full or half Powerbender tuned Diminished, natural minor The chromatic....
Each of the instruments have amazing players associated to them and in this lies my confusion. Choices, choices.
Please don't get me wrong, I ain't complaining. Its all good. Its just a huge bag to choose from.
Don't focus on the choices, just focus on playing, practising and having fun.
By the way: I see Adam Gussow always playing a Hohner Marineband classic.
I have a view favoriete harps: Beta harp (custemized seydel 1847) and the Hohner Crossover. But they are expencive, so usually I buy a Special 20 or a Marineband if I need a new harp (wich is not often because I replace my own reeds)....
well here's a fact: you can go to a cheapie store, buy a set of sockets and a ratchet made from pot metal, use them twice, break them, and go get more. but the price is good and they will more or less get the job done most of the time. or you can buy a good set for more $ and maybe keep these tools for a long long time, get a lot of good quality use out of them.
this is so with harps, which to me are a tool. i have tried and will continue to try better harps and new tech as i can afford to, not because it will make me into the next walter but because it makes doing what i do easier. and also i feel like if i have a good responsive harp i may make breakthroughs in my playing that i would not get to with a $5 harp.
i'm very happy with the range of choices available these days, along with all the teaching materials available for free or very inexpensive. making the time to take advantage of all this info is my challenge.
e certainly depend on both the "official" writeup on a new harp but more importantly, what seasoned players have to say about a new product or model. while it's true that there are those who expect a harp to improve their playing and those who get upset when they pay good $$ for a piece of crap that does not work well, the challenge has always been fitting oneself to what's available to them. some 6 mor 7 years ago, i saw blind mississippi morris play a $5 johnson harp better than i could play a sp20 or marine band at the time. he can probably still play circles around me. so yes, it IS the player more than anything. but we have much more quality choices these days in performance of a harp. one still has to find their individual voice with whatever they play.
Why pay upwards of $80.00 for 1 harp though? My 3 marine bands that I can buy for that price will last me longer. With the ability to interchange my busted reedplates with ones that don't have broken reeds. So about 3 harps and a fourth "Frankenstein" for $80.00 sounds a LOT better than 1 harp that will last the same time.
$80.00. I have to work for 8 hours before taxes to buy 1 harp. Almost a whole days work. To buy only 1 harmonica. Wow. No thanks.
Miles Dewar If you can play and control overblows and overdraws (not just hitting them from time to time, but control them in pitch) you must have a perfect harmonica. You have a choice to buy it or to study making any harmonica perfect. ---------- Excuse my bad English. Click on my photo or my username for my music.
I must say,I too am a bit over whelmed with all the options available to us today. Not that I know how it was,say back in the 60's,70's or earlier since Ive only just got into playing the Harp. But yes,its a big thing to pick one. I went with the thinking of just asking around & reading reviews as well as finding out what the pro's used. Sadly,I went with a Hohner Marine Band 1896/20. Not the deluxe. Boy do they need a lot of love out of the box. Great harp but... now Im looking for my next one,& the consensus here tends to lean to the Suzuki's,which I think Im gonna try. Either a Hammond or the Manji. Im leaning towards the Hammond more. The hard part is that you cant test out the harp before you buy,so you have to go on either someone else's word or blindly pick & hope. Good luck.
It comes back to one thing over and over again: The harmonica is the only instrument (to my knowledge) that you CAN'T TRY BEFORE YOU BUY. That's why one feels so overwhelmed at the array of choices. You HAVE to plunk down hard-earned cash (your proverbial "8 hours of labor") before you can even see if you like the darn thing, and then YOU CAN'T GET YOUR MONEY BACK if you don't actually like it! (In most cases). So it's bloody nerve racking to consider trying a new harp brand/model/tuning! You know your money will be gone either way, so you end up agonizing over your choices. In the end, I think almost every one of us has experienced "harp regret", and if you end up only wasting $30 a year on such purchases, you are lucky. I know that there are some folks to whom $30 is nothing. It's a tip on a drink in a fancy club. But to me, it's not chump change. It's serious money, and I spend a lot of time thinking about it before I spend it.
Now, what's been my latest roll on the harmonica roulette table? Yesterday I was compiling my Amazon wishlist (hey, Christmas is coming soon, and you NEVER know who might look at your wishlist!), and while researching Low harps, I noticed that for some reason, they had a Marine Band Deluxe in Low F listed for $36, from Amazon, with free shipping. Seeing as all the other MBD's were in the 50 dollar range, and that $36 is only $4 more than they were selling their Marine Band classics for, I jumped on it. It didn't hurt that Low F was exactly the key I was looking for. I bought it because the price was really right, I knew I needed/wanted a Low F, and that all my customization techniques (learned on Marine Bands and Special 20's) ought to work just the same on a Marine Band Deluxe. It's not often that I do such "impulse buys", but the example I've described above is pretty much the "perfect storm" for doing so, so how could I refuse?! By they way, the deal is still on, so you might consider purchasing one of these your self!
As an aside. I think $36 is MUCH more fair of a price on the MBD than is 50 some-odd bucks, or however they are priced now. Considering that Hohner has been set up to tap and screw harps for many years, the only really "new" thing they are doing to the MBD is (sort of) sealing the comb. Paying ~$5 above a MB classic seems pretty much all that is worth to me. I think Hohner would be selling ALOT more of these if they brought the price down even to like $40. At least then it would be comparable to a Manji. ---------- -------------------------------------- View my videos on YouTube!"
Last Edited by on Dec 05, 2010 12:52 PM
Isaac, I think any mouth instrument can't be tried, but for a trumpet, for instance, I suspect it's just the mouthpiece. I suppose you might get a model of mouthpiece you don't like, but I doubt once you find a model you like you will find a individual bad one. Melodicas and recorders and a few other odd ball instruments probably fall into that category too.
Things are as simple or as complex and you need them to be. 13 of the 14 cuts on my new album are played on stock Marine Bands with very minor tweaks (<5 minutes' worth), or in some cases no tweaks at all, straight out of the box. I can make them do what I need them to do. I play fast, I toss in overblows; they play strong and sound good. To be sure, the overblows I play are almost always passing tones, rather than sustained notes; I don't bend OBs, and I rarely hit overdraws. If I wanted to play serious jazz OB stuff, like Carlos D. or Buddha, I would certainly need to upgrade. (I still cringe a little when I get ready to hit a brisk arpeggio that contains back-to-back overblows.) But because I play fairly straightforward blues/funk/R&B, the harps work for me. A bad MB is no fun, but I don't get those very often.
I encourage all players to try a range of different harps before settling on the one or two brands/models that feel right. I certainly did that. I spent about a year wandering away from Marine Bands. I bought Special 20s, Golden Melodys, Pro Harps, Big Rivers, and a couple of Lee Oskars. I ended up returning to Marine Bands. I had a couple of Big River Db harps over the years and they were OK. I liked the Seydel harps that I got when I visited the factory. But ultimately the instrument is no more than an instrument; it should feel good in your hands, do what you need it to do--and then, in essence, become invisible, transparent, in your hands, so that the music you're thinking and feeling just pours out and sounds right to your ears.
But musicians go through explorations, and there's nothing wrong with focusing a lot of attention on one's instrument at a particular moment in one's learning process, or at several successive moments.
I've certainly heard many talented musicians who were playing passable stuff on expensive harps, but who weren't really making MUSIC. We're all familiar with this comic type: the advanced beginner or semi-skilled practitioner who is driving a Ferrari; the not-terribly-strong biker on the Urago or Colnago. Buddha and I disagree about this point: he has said in at least one other thread that he thinks players should begin on very high quality custom harps. I don't. I believe that any reputable stock instrument is good enough for a beginner, and I think that beginners actually gain something from developing their strength on sub-optimal instruments. Certainly the classical world doesn't think that a beginning violin student needs to start at the top. A sturdy, time-tested, playable instrument is all that's required. The better instrument then becomes something to yearn towards, and the purchasing (or gifting) of such an instrument then becomes a way of marking a student's achievment.
Last Edited by on Dec 05, 2010 2:44 PM
"(or gifting)" are you fishing for something here?? lol
imo, you should be able to take your own harp to a store and play some stuff. this should prove to the clerk that you aint a quack or a hack. then you get to test out a harp. if it has issues, your demonstration should prove it is the harps fault and not yours.
I think what gets me is we spend so much time, money, and effort agonising on all kudzurunners points and when we go out in the world the harmonica is still, even with the current renaissance, a little appreciated instrument in general, but as we all know when you play it to your local (appreciative) audience, they say the same thing!
Last Edited by on Dec 05, 2010 2:54 PM
I think harp players are at a bit of a watershed at the moment, between the past of tin-sandwiches and the hi-tech future. It's tough to let go of the past. But also diatonic harps, far more than chromatic harps, are expensive for what they are, and you need up to 15 of them in different keys. At $200+ per harp, that's the cost of a professional classical instrument which will literally last a life-time. The harps you'll get for that money won't last as long. Also, professional classical musicians normally don't have or need a spare instrument, so if harp players have to have a spare set, then that doubles the problem. Beginners in classical music, although they start on cheap instruments, start on instruments that are already at least 99% as good as the best stock harp available, possibly 90% as good as the best custom harp, so for them there's no watershed, and I can see Chris's point of view. But it's a problem. I don't mind spending $3,000 on an oboe, but wild horses wouldn't make me part with $3,000 for harps. I've tried MB, GM, Lee Oskar, Seydel, Hering. I'd rather stick with MBs and customise them myself than buy more expensive harps.
As to a glorious future for serious classical or jazz harp, those people who play chromatic on a diatonic harp, are they impressing anyone but diatonic harp players? Chromatic pro harp playing was popular in the past, and the lay audience didn't know the difference between diatonic and chromatic, and I don't see any reason to abandon the past. The public really do care more about the music than the instrument.
[[I'm stuck in a self-contradictory web here - I'm saying actually, that the audience liked chromatic harps, and so should you]]
No, I think what I'm saying is playing jazz on a diatonic is like painting a miniature portrait with a 4" brush: clever but pointless.
I guess if your diatonic playing were identical to your chromatic playing, then it really wouldn't matter, but until then the jazz diatonic player will always get the occasional novelty spot, the same as if you were playing a teapot with a trumpet mouthpiece, but even then, that would require the audience to know what a diatonic harp was. I honestly can't listen to Howard Levy's music. I think he lacks expression and tone.
Well, that wasn't meant to be structured, coherent, or cogent. Just a bunch of thoughts. ---------- Andrew, gentleman of leisure, noodler extraordinaire.
Last Edited by on Dec 05, 2010 3:27 PM
@Andrew: Do you have Carlos Del Junco's album STEADY MOVIN'? What he does there isn't novelty stuff. It has expression and tone in spades. It has flagrant technique, all disciplined beautifully into distinctive phrasing. It's an exemplary album. For my money it's one of the great blues harmonica albums of the past twenty years, but it's also a jazz album. I wouldn't call it clever but pointless; it's certainly not the work of a noodler extraordinaire, but rather the work of somebody with a keen sense of melodic architecture. I have a hard time imagining that somebody who'd listened to the album all the way through could possibly, in good faith, characterize it as clever but pointless, so I'd urge you to purchase it. It might change your beliefs about jazz played on diatonic harps.
Last Edited by on Dec 05, 2010 7:31 PM
Following what Adam says, what some diatonic guys are doing, like Mariano Massolo in Argentina, or Greg Szlap in France, take the diatonic to a whole new level. It's just not anymore about "how many "new" notes I can get" on a diatonic but about taking advantage of the diatonic capabilities (it¡s timbre, expresiviness etc.)
I do think that still, the construction of the instrument limits the overblowing capabilities. You need to have a very good custom harp to play overblows as confortable as a bending. The revolution will come when out of the box harps can really make good overblows. I know there have been attemps but so far they have not worked, or had been as expensive as a custom harp. The b radical seems to e the last attempt in that direction.
When we can buy a 50 dolars harp that can overblow with ease (revolution in engeniering) THEN, overblows willl became popular part of every players arsenal, and not something that very few people can master.
Right now, we have to fight AGAINST the instrument.
---------- With some latin flavour for you, chico!! :P
If this isn't the definition of nostalgic beauty then I don't know what is:
For playing straight 2nd position blues I don't think one needs a set of 12 customs with backups. Off the shelf are just fine for that with the occasional overblow. Right now I am using 4 instruments to play everything in every key and have options and variety for the "sweet spots". These are B-flat, G, A, and D-flat. Only one is custom and the others are just stock (which I am slowly replacing with custom). The main reason I want them as custom is because of the specific tunings and not so much overblowing. Frankly, I agree with a lot of what has been said about "jazzers playing on diatonic" but just because it's been done wrong doesn't mean it can't be done right and to close your mind off to the broad spectrum of sound for diatonic is selling yourself and the instrument short.
