Suzuki Fabulous..A Pretty Face
Winslow.
After our recent emails in which you mentioned Christelle Berthon (whom I had never before heard of) and her switching from the Seydel 1847 to Suzuki Fabulous and Manji. I checked her on Utube and was blown away by her rendition of Sonny Boys..Help Me.
I have been using Suzuki Promasters mostly until now..and I very much like the way the cover plates extend out all the way to the end of the comb...tongue switching is much easier on the 1 hole and just drawing/blowing seems to be easier on the bottom 3 holes with the extended surface...the MBs I seem to suck air.
I ordered a new Fabulous Key of A which I just recieved. I must say it is like something you would get in a high end jewelry store. It is a gorgeous looking thing. Heavy and beautiful .. siver plated. The looks are the best to my eye of all harps.
Interestingly I used my Korg tuner and found the 5 draw and 9 draw to be quite flat!
This is a $300 list price harp.
I have a Marine Band key of C... I ordered custom from James Gordon...it is tuned perfectly, also $300.
The way the Suzuki Fabulous feels to me is really nice...I wish I could get on the is in tune!
I suppose I will have to join the club and get tools and learn how to tune them myself.
It seems all the customizes only do Hohner..I never see anyone who does Suzuki '.
What do you think?
Thank you!
steve
portland oregon
Winslow, that is a wonderful answer. I ordered the Just intonation on purpose because that is what I heard is best for Blues.
I am a fan of the Fabulous again! It is a beautiful thing...and makes me want to play more oftern..
Thank you very much..
Steve
Today I purchased Suzuki Fabulus Just tuning key of C . It is too heavy and I can't not figure out why they made it so heavy :) I do not know why I paid that much for this harmonica I do not feel any thing special . I liked promaster much more
Give it some time. Play it lightly, then dig in. PLay it for a little while each day. Alternate with the ProMaster. Let it grow on you. I think that over the next few weeks, you'll start to discover sounds you can make, and things you can get on the Fabulous that go beyond what the ProMaster can give you. But it won't happen instantly.
I still can't understand why should I pay for this harmonica. Don't like it. Strongly beleive wasted my money unless
It last for years and years .
If yo don't think it was a worthwhile purchas and it's stil in good condition, you might be able to sell it and get at least some of your moneyback.
Interesting material here - I am not up at all regarding tunings on the harp. I am very interested in the Suzuki Fabulous but not sure which tuning to order that would be best overall for the blues material we are learning here on bluesharmonica.com Can you give me your opinion? The blues songs so far (up to Level 4) have been mostly single notes, but frequently will ask for two adjacent notes together such as 3/4 draw. Is that considered a chord and won't sound good on a equal temperament?
A chord actually consists of three notes; two notes is a harmony.
Equal tempered chords aren't in acoustic tune with other, and generate additional tones that are also out of tune, hence the roughness of equal tempered chords on harmonica. On piano it sounds OK, but the harmonica generates so many overtones that those discordant sounds affect the character of what you hear.
Pure just intonation smooths out the chords and makes them sound bigger. But it can also put some of the notes in the chord out of tune with other instruments. Draw 5 especially can sound really flat as a melody note even though it sounds great in a chord.
You may never notice any of this unless you hear the difference when you play a just-tempered harmonica.
Jjust intonation is what you hear when you hear all those classic blues harmoncia records made from the 1920s through the early 1960s. You may wonder what adds that extra little magic to the sound on those. Genius is a big part, for sure, but those just-tuned harps also helped.
Steve -
The Fabulous comes in two different tunings, each with tis own model number. One of them is the F20J, and this model has Draw 5 and 9 tuned flat on purpose. This model also has the words "Just Tuning" on the comb at the right front. This is probably the version you have.
The other model is the F20E. This model will not have the flat-sounding Draw 5 and 9, but the chords will not sound as sweet.
Here's why the two tunings exist.
A harmonica tuned to acoustically pure intervals will produce chords that are sweet and powerful. By acoustically pure I mean that all the notes are tuned according to simple ratios - 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc. Because their wavelengths are in simple relationships, they don't create interference (the sweet part) and because their wave peaks line up, they sound powerful. This is a bit of a simplification, but it's close enough to illustrate the point.
This kind of tuning with acoustically pure intervals is called Just intonation, and that's one of the two tunings available for the Fabulous.
The problem with acoustically pure intervals is that even though they sound great in chords, some of them will sound flat as melody notes. This is especially true of Draw 5 and 9. Over the centuries, tuners have come up with many alternate ways to fine tune notes for musical instruments. These fine tunings are knows as temperaments. The most widely used is equal temperament, where each note is put slightly out of tune by the same amount. This is what is used on pianos, where it sounds OK. For harmonica chords it sounds terrible, but some harmonicas, including the F20E, do come in equal temperament.
A customizer like Jimmy Gordon can produce any temperament you want. However, for a customer who does not indicate a preference, Jimmy may have a standard temperament that has some combination that gives better sounding chords than Equal but better sounding melody notes than Just. No temperament is perfect - you always get something by giving up something else.
If you didn't specifically order the F20J version of the Fabulous, perhaps you can get the seller to accept a return and get the F20E instead. (If you have a Hohner Golden Melody, that's in Equal temperament, so you could get an idea of the difference by playing it and paying attention to the chords).