[Harp-L] re: What Should a Harmonica Cost?



I also play the guitar. Really hate changing them strings, though, used to put it off forever. But now I have solved this: Every time a string breaks I just buy a new guitar!
  Have a heck of a problem selling my used guitars, unfortunately (they don´t seem to be worth anything ...) so they do tend to stack up. 
  Apart from my basic set of 40 or so nicely stringed guitars (you gotta have extras in case a string snaps) I also now have quite a few ... broken ones just hanging around.
 
But I think it´s all for the best in this fabulous world where the price is always right (in fact, I think they could raise the price of guitars a bit: I´d gladly spend some more!).
 
/Signor Pangloss
 
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>What should a harmonica cost?

>Two stories:

>1. I had a conversation with a man who is a music instructor at Penn State University. His specialty is the bassoon. I asked him about the instrument he was playing, and he told me that it cost him $30,000 from the instrument maker, then he had it shipped to California where he had another person make final adjustments to it. This cost him an additional $6000. He also paid the freight both ways.

He also spends hours every week hand carving the reeds that he uses in the instrument.

2. When I got the idea in 1984 of how to build a harmonica that would bend notes blowing and drawing, I set out to build one. Over the next 8 years or so, i spent easily $10,000 and untold hours to build a prototype that really played well.

I ended up with one prototype that played well enough to get on stage with, but it was bulky, a lot of work to play, and did not sound as good as one of my simple short harps. It was like dreaming of a Rolls Royce while driving a beat up bread truck. 

What is it worth to you to get the sounds in your head out into the world?

To me, buying an SUB 30 for $200 plus whatever it costs to get the perfect comb, etc, and spending a couple hours working on it to get a harp that plays some of the music I hear in my head is the deal of the century.  

Richard Sleigh


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