New B flat harp
Hi all,
I want to by a new B flat harp and have previously gone exclusively for Hohner, mostly the Crossover. I fancy trying another brand and wonder if anyone can recommend a different brand/model?
Thanks,
Mark.
Hi Rob,
After looking at reviews on Youtube, I went for a Seydel 1847 Silver. Roughly the same price as a Hohner Crossover. Will Wilde and Peter Madcat Ruth recommend Seydel and so I am in great company. I played it today for the first time and I love it! It seems to have a really nice resonant tone and I went for a plastic comb so that I can put the whole thing in an ultrasonic cleaner when needed.
No numbers on the holes though but I think I can manage to play it the right way most of the time (although got my Hohner crossover harp the wrong way round twice during practice today :-(
Thanks for your advice. I thought about buying a Lee Oskar after listening to an interview with Mr Oskar himself in which he was enthusing about the quality of his harps. One YouTube review highlighted that they are not the best harps for playing quietly or indeed to play blues.
Mark.
Mark:
Glad you sprung for the 1847 Silver. One of these days I may open up my wallet and try one.
Add to that great company: I regularly cross paths with both Mark Hummel and Aki Kumar, both of whom use Seydel pretty much exclusively. (And they don't get much from Seydel, e.g., not a ton of free harps. They wouldn't play 'em if the didn't like 'em.) Charlie Mussellwhite was a longtime Seydel endorser. Over the past couple of years I've been to two informal events featuring him, and saw that these days his collection of harps is a varied as my own. But still has Seydels in it. (Since moving back to Clarksdale Mississippi he's been playing a lot of Marine Bands customized for him by Deak Harp, whose harps are a whole 'nuther world.)
I really like the Seydel Tony Eyers Major Cross harps I have, plus a Saxony chromatic I picked up for very little money from a friend and had rebuilt a reasonable cost by Seydel's US rep Greg Jones.
But what really sells me on Seydel is that they sponsor Neil Warren's great Harmonica Happy Hour Podcast. Which I hope is on your listening list.
Cheers,
-Rob
Just to come back to you on the Happy Hour Podcast Rob. Yes, I do listen to it and I find some of the interviews really inspiring. I usually have a notepad to hand when listening, just to note down any YouTube clips to watch. The Lee Oskar interview I mentioned in my previous post was with Neil Warren back in 2020, when the world was in lockdown. I only started listening to the Happy Hour late last year and am trying to do the interviews in chronological order, hence being still with the 2020 podcasts.
As a sidenote, at the Harmonica UK festival last year, I saw a leaflet advertising the Happy Hour podcast and started to tell my friend that I listen to it. A guy standing close by said 'that's my podcast'. Yes, it was Neil Warren. This emphasises my thinking that the harmonica world is a tight community!
I call that hogwash.
I've played blues with Lee Oskar harps, Hohner and Seydel and Suzuki (these two chromatic). Any of those brands is fine. I understand different people have their preferences, but regardless Lee Oskars are fine for blues. They are quite durable, too.
When he saw my Lee Oskar set at his jam (I use those and Hohner Marine Band Deluxes), Aki mentioned they are great harps and that he used them when he started playing blues. Notoriously, Junior Wells was buried with his set of Lee Oskar harps, which is the brand he played late in life when Hohner's quality reportedly took a nosedive.
Which jam of Aki's did you (do you) go to? I keep hoping to get to a jam he runs one of these days. (In the meantime, he put on a fabulous show here in Sacramento just a little bit ago.)
Re the "hogwash," some of it might be an image thing. E.g., Hohner goes way back with the blues here in the USA, mainly because for a long time it was all one could get. And the 1896 Marine Band, costing just a buck or two way back then, was the entry point for so many greats. Other brands? Just a few years ago I ran into a fairly new player who was doing a really good job as a street performer with a set of Special 20s. He asked what I was carrying, which led to my showing him what was in my one-harp belt case, and his responding that he'd never heard of Seydel. With further conversation, it turned out that he had no idea who Lee Oskar was, or that the Suzuki name meant anything aside from cars and motorcycles.
So Lee Oskar? Yep, just fine for blues. With consistent quality and easy serviceability. (As I posted in a product review years ago, it's sort of the Ford F150 of harps.) These days every major manufacturer is making really good harps, and half the fun of playing them is that every make and model is slightly different.
Back to Lee Oskar: Could some folks' thinking be based on his not being strictly a traditional blues player? Even if you're a died-in-the-wool blues person, if tunes like Lee's "Children of the World" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxlOpinYN0A) don't bring a smile to your face ... you're in real trouble!
Aki runs a blues jam every Sunday afternoon 4-7pm at Narrative Fermentations brewery in San Jose (https://g.co/kgs/cY4G34C). He hosts most times, unless he has a conflicting gig (in which case some of his friends hosts instead). He usually posts reminders on Facebook on Saturdays or Sunday mornings, where he states whether he will host or who else will instead. He also often plays drums on the house band at the jam hosted by Gleidson Sousa every other Tuesday night 8-11pm at The Note pub (aka The Blue Note, https://g.co/kgs/uM7msUg) in Milpitas, also hosting when Gleidson is out.
It's a long drive from Sacramento either way, but they are both great jams and we sometimes have surprise guests: Mark Hummel shows up often, and many blues musicians based in the area or touring stop by. See this video I recorded of one such occasion with Kid Andersen doing Baby Scratch My Back with one of Slim Harpo's own guitars and visiting sax player Eric Spaulding: https://youtu.be/v39_RlRizSA
Re: Lee Oskar and blues, I don't particularly care what brand people prefer, but if someone is considering brands they shouldn't discount L.O. just because someone on the Internet said it's not good for blues, thus my clarification. I've had my Lee Oskars for over nine years now and they are a workhorse, I only had to replace a comb in the one I used most (you guessed it, an A harp) because I dropped it at the time. There are some things I don't liked so much at the time, namely that the cover plates are sharp like blades at some spots, but I've seen the same in regular Marine Bands, that's why I started getting MB Deluxe (but I have to say over time I stopped hurting my lips with the LO cover plates, so it was likely an embouchure/technique issue on my side). Though I now like the MB Deluxes slightly better (more ergonomic, brighter tone because of the open cover plate vents which I now prefer as my cupping technique is better, its smaller size also allows easier cupping) I still play my Lee Oskars just as frequently, and I get good comments about my tone :-). I recorded this cover of Stormy Weather a long time ago (https://youtu.be/XReXMu_arW0) and many of the recordings I posted in the "share" section of this site while playing Lee Oskars, so they're definitely very usable for blues.
BTW, anyone interested in blues hands in the Bay Area should check https://rubblejams.com, which has this very handy Google calendar with the schedule of all available jams https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?color=%239fe1e7&src=rubblejam...
mmarquez: Thanks! I used to make the drive to San Jose from time to time when David still had the brick-and-mortar School of the Blues venue, and still do when a friend is playing at a monthly trad jazz/swing dance event down there. While the Torch Club's blues jam is most Sundays, there are one or two Sundays each month when something else happens. I'll try to make it down to Narrative Fermentations some day in 2025!
So you can see the godfather of the Bay Area blues and Aki for the same (driving) price.
I guess it being Superbowl afternoon probably means less traffic?
I plan to be there.
I knew that Aki had coaxed Gary out of hibernation for the jam tomorrow. Sadly, I have a calendar conflict. Were there to be any Sunday afternoon with little traffic on the 880, tomorrow will be it! Have a great time.
Mark:
While the majority of my harps are Hohners (a collection of Rockets, Rocket Amps and Marine Band Deluxes), I love trying other makes. I have an abbreviated seven-harp set of Lee Oskars with various colors of combs from Blue Moon, but also have two Suzukis I wanted to try, a G Manji and an A Promaster. They're both really nice harps. I also have a few keys of Tony Eyers' "Major Cross" Seydels, that I use from time to time for church music and for pop tunes with our cabaret troupe.
You wouldn't go wrong with a Rocket or Rocket Amp for a different Bb, but if you're looking to try different brands, models that Suzuki and Seydel make that are similar in price to the Crossover (or that Lee Oskar makes for a price comparable to the Hohner Blues Harp - one nice thing about Lee Oskar is that there's really only one model, and it's all the same price, regardless of tuning) could be a fun adventure.
Let us all know what you pick up, and how you like it.