SBS Ouch

[Winslow Yerxa <76450.3230@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

RE: SBS Ouch

After reading Ted amd Tim's posts I looked at my own SBS harps -
I have five - and looked at the fronts. Some of them show a little
"rail" as I've heard it called, in front of the covers - about as
much as a regular Marine Band, while some of them have the covers
advanced so far forward that there is effectively nothing
sticking out - the covers are flush with the mouthpiece.

This suggests that you can probably loosen the screws that hold
the covers down, and move them forward a bit.

I've never had this problem with any Hohner Harp, but I have
with a wooden-bodied Huang. The difference between its rail
and that of a Marine Band was only about 3/4 of a millimeter, but
I found my lips getting sore in a hurry.

So, you may be able to alleviate the problem with only a minor
repositioning of the covers. Covers can also be reshaped with the
right equipment - Joe Filisko does this as a matter of course on
his custom Marine Bands. For about $40 he will take a new Marine
Band, treat the wood to prevent swelling, set up the reed
action, tune the instrument so that the chords sound *good*,
re-shape the covers - and he will double the thickness of the
reedplates to give it a bigger sound.

This is what Howard Levy plays now about 90 percent of the time.
It goes to show that the Marine Band is an excellent design. It's
just that it's sloppily executed in the factory becuase they
can't afford to do more than crank them out in nominally playable
condition. But the basic are there, and in the hands of a master
like Joe, they blossom.

By the way, Steve Baker is not only well connected at Hohner,
he's on their payroll as a consultant, and gives the black forest
eggheads a dose of reality - they'd like to deny that their
biggest single market - American diatonic players - even exists
because it's so foreign to them culturally. I saw this first hand
when I was in Germany at the World Championships in September. So
Steve deserves all the support we can give him, especially now
that he's about to become a father for the first time.