Rumours
Hi Kinya, i hope you're well and feeling good.
Mate, i just wanted to get the oil from you on some stories im seeing floating about on the web and of course they make their way through the social media.
this goes back to the labelling of the sp20 as 'progressive' and some problems with setup which occurred at the same time. a lot of people began telling stories that the sp20 was not the same harp it previously was, and gradually more and more folk began to attribute this to 'outsourcing to china'.
now i see JP Allen is lending credence to this story.
in my experience with my own harps and those i repair for others, i see no difference between a marine band sp20 and a progressive (beyond the obvious badging, and drilling to mount rocket cover plates, and 1.6/2 M reed plate bolts)
ive repaired quite a few hohners, and have over 80 of my own harps. i even bought a couple of progressive sp20s to see what the deal was. they definitely need the gaps reset, but once i did that they were as good to play as any harp in my kit, and superior to many 'marine band' sp20s that land on my bench.
anyway, i dont have any qualms about the quality of these things, but i'm curious whether there is any veracity to the claims of 'outsourcing'. do you have any insight into that?
cheers and best wishes,
Dave
This subject came up on the Harp L list back in June.
Steve responded with the following:
"The suggestion that Hohner harmonicas are made in China has come up regularly ever sincea majority interest in the company was purchased by HS Investment nearly 20 years ago.
The core technology in any harmonica is the reeds and reed plates. All reeds and reed plates for all chromatics, Hohner Marine Band Series, Progressive Series and MS Series diatonics (as well as all covers and combs) are manufactured in Germany and always will beWith some diatonic models, parts of the assembly process take place in China, under (as Aongus Mac Cana has rightly observed in Harp-L) close supervision by highly qualified Hohner staff.Final assembly of all these models takes place in Germany.All chromatics with the exception of the Chrometta Series are entirely manufactured in Germany.The only Hohner harmonicas which are made in China state this fact clearly on the packaging"
I copied this from the harp l archive (see link below).
http://harp-l.org/pipermail/harp-l/2017-June/002626.html
you can see further discussion in the follow up threads I think.
Apologies if this is old news!
cheers
Alex
BRILLIANT. Thank you all.
The only thing I can add is that I heard (from a reliable source ;o), that the original PROGRESSIVE Marine Band harmonicas: Special 20 and Rockets reed gaps were too excessive for the serious harmonica player. Hohner technicians should have already dropped the gap on subsequent shippments of those harmonicas.
Your Harpsmith, Kinya
thanks everyone. this aligns with my understanding also. sometimes i just need to get a reality check when i encounter strange views which have potential to cause me cognitive dissonance
Hi Dave, Nothing wrong with a little cognitive dissonance every once in a great while. Better here amongst friends than out there ;o)
Your Harpsmith, Kinya
I think Steve would be a better source of information than JP Allen. David is in contact with Joe Filisko who is quite knowledgeable in regards to Hohner products. Lastly Joe Spiers is a Hohner certified tech he could have some insight.