I just got a set of Dannecker Crossovers in the post and want to share this with y'all...
STOCK CROSSOVER vs DANNECKER CROSSOVER
Imagine you've got the choice between
(a) a decent meal at a decent price, made from decent ingredients and cooked in a decent restaurant - around £45
and
(b) a gourmet meal made from hand-picked ingredients, cooked by one of the world's top chefs and prepared to suit your tastes - £50
Which do you choose?
No brainer, ain't it?
Now...
Imagine you've got the same choice and add, that.
for (a), it'll be decent, high-quality fayre, but you have to take the meal as it comes - for around £45
for (b), the chef himself is on the end of the phone, enjoys discussing your dietary requirements, your tastes and wants to get to know you so that you'll get the best possible dinner. For no extra charge at £50
1. I get no endorsement from Antony. I just like beautifully tuned, very playable harmonicas.
2. I know nothing about serious customisation. This is a player's reponse.
3. I don't know about Dannecker harmonicas other than his custom MB Crossovers. However... Players whose judgement I trust and whose musicianship I rate vary highly have very good things to say about several of his products.
xxx
EDITED to appease my inner grammar obsessive.
Last Edited by on Dec 23, 2010 3:46 AM
Do these custom harps come in red boxes ? I ask because last summer, I talked to the harp player of the belgian blues band Hobo Jungle and he told me his harps (custom SP20 I think) were done by a guy in UK, and for not much more money than the basic product. And his harps were in red plastic boxes.
Aye! Cap'n. I've often looked at Antony's harps and wondered.
If a base model is £45.00 and yet for £50.00 I can get
"Fully customised ensuring air-tightness, responsiveness and Antony’s legendary tuning accuracy"
and
"Please note this is a Dannecker built custom harmonica and it's performance will far exceed that of standard shop bought instruments"
I understand from that statement that it is not a shop bought harp that has been simply re-gapped, tuning checked and tightened up and sold on, but one that has been lovingly assembled component by component and fully customised (whatever that may mean) for the customer for an extra £5. I'm at a loss to imagine how this can all be done for a fiver.
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure thay are very nice harps but how can he be so reasonably priced when other customisers need to charge a small fortune?
Last Edited by on Dec 23, 2010 4:22 AM
Well, I get from his website that he has a special bound with Hohner, I guess he gets the separate elements from Hohner at a low price and assembles them.
/I understand from that statement that it is not a shop bought harp that has been simply re-gapped, tuning checked and tightened up and sold on, but one that has been lovingly assembled component by component and fully customised (whatever that may mean) for the customer for an extra £5. I'm at a loss to imagine how this can all be done for a fiver.
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure thay are very nice harps but how can he be so reasonably priced when other customisers need to charge a small fortune?/
That, I can't answer.
All I can say is I paid £50 / harmonica, they arrived in yesterday's post, they play and sound great and that, yes, the value for money seems almost unbelievable.
Tookatooka - The trick is to decipher the "language of the label"...there is no standardised meaning to "customised/fully customised". If you are expecting embossing, reed flattening, overblow capabilities, reed chamfering etc for £50 a harp, then you will be disappointed due to unrealistic expectations.
What you will get is a tuned & gapped harp, without the usual "off the shelf" deficiencies. Worth £5 I'd say.
/The trick is to decipher the "language of the label"...there is no standardised meaning to "customised/fully customised". If you are expecting embossing, reed flattening, overblow capabilities, reed chamfering etc for £50 a harp, then you will be disappointed due to unrealistic expectations./
Wise words (I think. I don't know what some of them mean!)
/What you will get is a tuned & gapped harp, without the usual "off the shelf" deficiencies./
Plus, it seems, quality control, tuning choices (options for alternate tunings and for ET / intonated tuning are available) and customer service where you can talk directly with the craftsman.
/Worth £5 I'd say./
Based on current playing experience, I couldn't agree more.
I've spoken to him a number of times over the years since I worked for Hohner's UK retail division (long defunct) and have renewed my acquaintance with him in recent years, although I am only a customer of his, not a personal friend and would be flattered if he even remembered me if I called him.
The Dannecker family have a very long relationship with Hohner (over 100 years, I think). Tony is the third generation of Hohner appointed technicians and has maintained many top harmonicist's instruments, both chrom and diatonic, including the late great Larry Adler.
As has been mentioned, I understand he does buy instruments directly from Hohner and does a wonderful job in improving them far beyond their out of the box standard. However, what he does, whilst it is a massive improvement, I wouldn't (and I don't think he would) call it customising in the sense of embossing / waxing / scooping etc. I've asked him about setting up for overblows / draws and his response was that he wasn't keen as it is arduous and there's no money in it. I'm guessing if Charlie Musselwhite or one of his prestigious clients requested it, he would, but I found him quite disinterested and he views many such techniques as unnecessary. I tend to agree with him when an instrument is as well set up as the product he offers.
I ordered a MS Miesterclasse with a Crossharp comb. To look inside the instrument is to see some beautiful engineering. All the reeds are perfectly spaced and I felt a little ashamed to mess with it for overblows, but a little tweaking and there they were. If I could criticise his work, it would be that they do take a bit of wind to really make them perform, but that's coming from a guy who's smoked a pack a day for 20 odd years. I like my harps to respond too easily to make up for my pecadillo.
In response to tookatooka, I don't think the work Tony does is in any way as labourious as say Joe Spiers. I own 3 Spiers harps and when ordering, Joe and I discussed exactly what I wanted (even in light of my smoking) and Joe delivered exactly that and more, but it took some months. Tony will give you a superb harp, as they really should come out of Hohner's factory for a small surcharge. The difference is minimal to the average player between a Dannecker and a Spiers instrument, but when we look at the specialised techniques required for this little instrument, people will pay that extra and wait that extra time.
I think there's a place for both and I'm really happy to have been clients to both.
Last Edited by on Dec 23, 2010 8:12 AM
First of all I would like to state that I found Tony to be a very nice bloke who has a lot of experience in the harmonica world. I ordered a Dannecker Blues ( a sort of revamped MS Meisterclasse )for around a £100. The harmonica was lovely to look at and felt reasuringly heavy with its metal comb and had spot on tuning. These instruments are checked before they leave the factory.
I think the custom label in this case at least, referred to the styling, the check and the tuning. For the £40 extra, I was hoping for a bit more at least gapping for overblows that I mentioned I required.
The harp played generally pretty well with a nice tone but holes 2& 3 took a bit more puff than I like and there were no overblows or overdraws available.
I could have adjusted it but having paid the extra money I thought I'd send it back. Tony was pretty upset that it didn't meeet my expectations and was determined to try and put it right. I sent him one of my suzuki harps that I'd gapped, but he wasn't happy to adjust the Dannecker Blues to those tolerances and was happy to refund my money, which was fair of him.
I guess what I am saying is that Dannecker Harps are probably better than OOTB harps for the reasons I have stated above but in no way could they be true customised harps. I suppose you only have to look at the price difference to realise that.
I haven't any experience of the DANNECKER CROSSOVER, so I can't comment on that.
we had a thread about a month or 2 ago about customizations. maybe it was started by chromaticblues? every one started chiming in about varying prices and work and such. i suggested that all customizers should start explaining what services one is getting. this way, a buyer can more easily compare the products to the price. sure, some customizers are gonna be better at some aspects as others. for instance, if everyone gaps, i would think some guys could be better at it than others. but you can at least decide if a $5 gap job from one customizer is worth it as opposed to a $10 gap from somebody else. maybe customizers should develop some sort of option list, or become certified.
@eharp For the most part you get what you pay for! There are alot of people that don't like harps that have had all the tricks done to them! Most people don't need as much done to there harps as they think!It is quit possible for some one to make very playable Crossovers with just setting it up right. When I modify them I DO NOT Emboss the whole slot. If you need your harp to overblow four semitones. Then the above mentioned harp and nothing I have made or will ever make is NOT the harp for you. There is a way of making harps overblow like crazy without whole slot embossing. I accidently figured out something Joe filisko use to do years ago. I bought Richard Sleigh's book a couple years ago and sent him a harp I had just built for myself. He gave me some helpful hints that. At the time I wasn't capable of reading between the lines so it wasn't a great help. Luckily I was smart enough to make notes of everything. I even made notes of things I didn't understand, but knew I had to learn. I guess the moral of this long winded story is maybe you don't always get what you pay for. Sometimes you get a little a little more. But seriously you can't go by what someone has done to a harp. It would probably take me 8 hours to make a big river useable for a good harp player. I can make a Crossover useable in an hour! Sometimes its different from harp to harp of the same kind. Its just a crap shoot with harps. The worse the harp is the more work it takes to make it good. Not all harps are created equal either. What I mean is sometimes I make 1896 MB's and thier GREAT. Sometimes I get pissed and throw them in the garbage and start over. Not all of them are worth making into custom harps. Its just the way it is. I think there are days when the machines are set up better than others in the factory. At least now I know what to look for and can tell if I got a dud or not within a minute. Back to the danecker harps. If he starts with GOOD crossovers I'm sure he makes very playable harps. I think alot of you would be surprised how good a Crossover with no factory defects can be made to play without embossing or champhering or any of the other bull$h!t everyone gets bombbarded with. Who does Adams harps for him. He's pretty good!
i agree that sometimes people ask for more than what they actually need. i think that once you buy a fine harp, a crossover for instance- it needs nothing but some chops to make it good. that's cuz it is good. lemme repeat that, it is good.
when someone asks, "is this a good harp?",- god knows i just wanna say,' depends who's playin' it'.- today a friend showed me a gordon. he doesn't like it. good harp. well, whatcha gonna do?-------- MP hibachi cook for the yakuza doctor of semiotics superhero emeritus
Last Edited by on Dec 23, 2010 10:14 PM
The reality of playing harmonica is that 99.9% of players do not need to have a "custom" harp in the sense of what most players mean by that word. Pretty much most of the players can do what they need to do on a harmonica that has been properly gapped. With a properly gapped harmonica you can achieve overblows without any real problem, as long as your technique is correct.
I suspect most players buy "custom" harmonicas due to inexperience brought on by being "newbies" in much the same way that people in the beginning (and in some case all the time) believe that "gear" will give them "that" sound. When the reality is the only way to get your sound is through hard work and getting "chops".
There are of course exceptions to this. People like Todd Parrot and Jason Ricci for example who play in styles that requires them to bend overblows quite often. In such cases then a "custom" harmonica is of course a wise investment. Having said that though both of those players would tell you quite openly that they learnt to overblow on stock harmonicas. They spent years learning their craft before investing in "custom" harmonicas.
Just in case you don't know how to gap harmonicas properly or don't believe they can be overblown just by gapping. The proof is in the excellent set of gapping videos made by the great harmonica customiser Joe Spiers.
