How to Convert a Melody Maker Tuning to Richter Blues Tuning (Ep6)
Happy New Years Everyone! Episode 6 HARPSMITH Bench is now available for viewing. You will learn how to convert a Melody Maker (and Country Tuned) harmonica into a blues Richter tuned harmonica. It's super inexpensive and easy to do!
https://www.bluesharmonica.com/harpsmith_bench
Your Harpsmith, Kinya
WoozleEffect - Are your blobs related to Steve McQueen's 1958 Blob ????
Very closely related! lol.
Those ones were red, while mine are blue!
There should be no need to worry about your harmonica absorbing you and everyone around you...
... but I suppose you might find yourself absorbed into several hours of addictive harmonica maintenance!
Hey Wooz, thanks for sharing your Blob hacks!
Your Harpsmith, Kinya
Ok... so I wanted to see how far I could really go, and I just kept piling on the blue tac into an impossibly tall blob. Evets, you may have something to worry about now. This was indeed out of control...
I got the C5 reed down to Bb3 before it started really konking out, so I moved down to the C4 (1-blow) reed to see what could be accomplished...
I ended up with a "fin" of putty that stuck up like a cresting wave. I also realized that there was NO WAY that the putty was actually clearing the slot entirely, and it WAS moving through the slot just fine, and the reed was sounding.
From there, I thought, why stop now?
So I stuck a reed plate screw into the big blog of blue-tac...
The lowest note I was able to get my iPad to recognize clearly was a C2: a full 2 octaves below the original pitch.
I did manage to get the reed to play lower, but my iPad seemed to be filtering out the sound as fan noise or electrical hum or something at that point.
Needless to say, this is ridiculous. The reed would never work inside an actual harp, under the covers or in a comb, but it was a fun experiment nonetheless!
It's now far too late at night, and I'm all scienced out! Cheers!
WHOA--out of control!
Your Harpsmith, Kinya
It never ceases to amaze me how much we can do with blue-tac.
Perfect for experimenting with alternate tunings. My first few Natural Minor and Harmonic Minor harps were all blue-tac monsters.
Actually, I opened up a Natural minor harp that I'd been gigging with for over a year to make some adjustments, and I was shocked that I had done it with blue-tac and never got around to making it permanent. It never failed! Granted, it got played maybe once or twice per show only, but still, it's impressive how long these fully reversible modifications can last!
I thought I'd share some notes I made regarding "fine-tuning" the blobs of blue putty just by shifting the blob slightly forward or backward to redistribute the weight. It's just like sliding the weight on a metronome up and down.
I've found this really helpful when you get within a few cents and just want to finess it a bit. You still want to stay away from those lower two-thirds of the reed, as you mentioned, to avoid deadening the reed. But we've got a lot of flexibility to shift things around up there on the tip of the reed!
Great video lesson. Thanks, Kinya!