[Harp-L] Re: SS vs. brass reeds



I bought 2 1847's shortly after they came out.
On average I was blowing out 1 reed every 5 gigs on the MB's or GM's I played a lot. C, A and D.


I figured out the cost of MB's at the time and the cost of an 1847. Since the 1847's ran close to 4 times as much as a MB they should last
at least 20 gigs based on my playing technique. To date I'm still playing the same 2 C and A harps I bought back in 2007. Between jams, record dates and gigs I've used the same 2 harps as my main C and A more then 90 times. Over that time I only had to slightly retune a few reeds.


Even though I can build them I no longer play any customs. 1847's right out of the box are great on their own. Being a busy harp tech I don't have time to work on my own harps and enjoy the
freedom playing Stainless Steel reeds provide.


I have friends that tend to blow them out but they play the high ends a lot and play overblows so there is more stress on the reeds then I play as a regular blues player.

I ordered a few Seydel SS Sessions for customers. The one guy is on this list so he can give a review once he has a chance to give it a test drive.

Mike


On Apr 16, 2011, at 9:03 AM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:


Message: 6
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:20:21 -0700
From: Vern <jevern@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Stainless steel vs. brass/other reeds
To: "<bluesbent@xxxxxxxx>" <bluesbent@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <04A18F90-B812-4F71-863F-4D1579C4BF38@xxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

A test to confirm or deny the superiority of SS reeds would involve playing a large number of harps until the reeds failed on a blowing machine. If the manufacturer's have done that, they have not reported it. Statistically it won't mean much, but none of the reeds on my hard-working Saxony have failed.

The properties of SS are better than those of copper alloys in that steel has a fatigue limit and copper alloys do not. (Fatigue limit is the stress below which there is negligible fatigue)

There are no certainties, but I think that SS is a good bet. I think that the average SS reed will live longer than the average copper- alloy reed. That said, the probabilities may overlap so that the best bronze can reed can outlast the worst SS one.

Vern








This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.