Re: [Harp-L] The reed issue



I have made reeds from various things (in an emergency). A split and flattened rifle bullet casing (it's 'annealed' at one end), and half of a double edged Wilkinson Sword razor blade (other blades should work). Also the stainless steel strips inside anti-theft devices, various contact points fingers from inside various electronics.
The problem would be to be able to do this is quantity. I believe reeds are made in 'series'. One block will be ground to a specific length & end weight (or not), and will cover several tones (like Ab to B, then C to Eb, and so on). They are later 'finished' off and brought into their relative tone, set in the harmonica, and then fine tuned by hand. Doing reeds one at a time with cuticle cutters, files, and stones, is VERY tedious.


smokey-joe


On Mar 23, 2007, at 1:27 PM, Zombor Kovacs wrote:


Hi all!

I have been fiddling around with harps for a while.
The most annoying thing for most of us is the fatique
of reeds. I guess that reed quality today is
determined by sales figures and somewhere half way
between what is profitable to manufacture and what
customers still buy because they accept the lifetime.
Maybe because they don't know that reeds can last
longer. If they lasted longer, the harmonica lasted
longer and sales figures would drop. Also price would
increase because of higher reed quality.
But I am not willing to accept that we have to use
crap reeds, which are visibly crap. Has anybody tried
to make reeds? Of higher quality materials, from
different alloys with good surface etc. I would be
interested to know more about this topic.

Zombor - www.zovax.atw.hu



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