two Special 20 A harps
I have been working on growing my collection of Special 20's, to get my basic assortment of keys. My A harp always seemed difficult to play, compared to the others. It felt leaky, harder to bend notes, harder to get a note started. I finally got fed up, and bought another one, thinking that maybe there was some isolated manufacturing variation with that harp.
But, the new one is exactly the same! Is it possible that there is one guy tuning all the A harps at Honer, and he's different than the others? Or am I just being too wimpy, and need to get on with it? (I guess customizing it is an option, but so far, my heavy hand has only destroyed the harps).
Thanks, Bob
Hi Winslow,
1) Yes, all the notes seem bad (though admittedly, I'm playing only the lowest half of the holes 95% of the time). But since I'm doing alot of bending the 1,2,3,4 holes, I notice it on all of these the most.
2) The neighboring Bb is actually the harp that seems the sweetest, and easiest to play, of all my harps. ( I don't have an Ab yet).
I'll look at the Harmonica For Dummies. This seems much more reasonable than what I was trying to do, which was to go right into embossing, knowing very little about it. Thanks so much for your suggestions,
- Bob
Hi Bob,
I am a student from Gunter Bayer (worked for Hohner 40 years) and he is teaching me how to build and fix harmonicas. If you are interested, send me one of your "A" harps, I will then go through it and check the tuning and gapping and send it back to you. You would have to pay for shipping and I should let you know that I live in Germany.
if you are interested send me an email
chris@melodycenter.ch
Chris
Hi Chris, Will do! Thanks for your interest.
I wrecked one of the A's, while trying to make "fix" it. But I'll send you the other one.
Thanks,
Bob
Hi Bob,
you can send me both if you want. I can replace reeds if necessary.
Bob -
Without hearing you playing and/or examining your harps, it's difficult to assess the situation. I do remember that early in my playing career certain keys never seemed to work out well - I could never get a good C harp, for instance, and A-harps always seemed a little wimpy compared to the muscularity of Bb harps.
But over time all of that changed, and no keys stood out as especially bad or good.
It's possible that you got two naff A-harps in a row; I wouldn't discount the possibility out of hand. It's also possible that there's something about the geometry of your vocal tract that just ain't makin' sweet music with that particular key of harp.
A few questions:
1) Do *all* the notes on the A-harps sound bad, or just specific ones. If so, are they the same ones on both harps.
2) What happens when you play harps that are in Bb or Ab (the closest neighboring keys)?
If you want to try improving the harps, I describe some simple procedures in Harmonica For Dummies. Briefly, you can unscrew the covers and reedplates, and then tighten them again. This simple procedure can do a lot to improve airtightness. If you want to get a little more adventurous, you can get into lightly tugging on the reeds to lower the gaps a *tiny* amount