[Harp-L] Re:chromatic repair

[jon kip <jon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

There do seem to be quite a few great repair folks here, and I see they're speaking up, however, for The Future (if it actually happens) , unless you have a multitude of working instruments, it may be time to buy a junker or two from ebay and work on them yourself. 

I'm not sure if a junker or a clunker would be better, ebay seems to not make that distinction, leaving it up to the end user.

The deluxe 270 is one of the easier instruments to deal with. 

One of the great benefits of working on your own instruments is that you really CAN eat saltines and peanut butter while practicing, and be able to deal with things as they go awry, which they certainly will. Reed slots and saltines seem to have one of those Fatal Attractions that they make movies about.

While having a professional horn smasher work on your horns is very convenient,  BEST OF ALL, it can be VERY educational. The chromatic harmonica is a fickle tool at best, and in the time it took to type this, check spellling and put this in an e-envelope with an e-stamp, plus ten minutes or so, you probably could have fixed it yourself.

Or, totally screwed it up, of course. 

To fully duplicate the "professional repair" experience at home, you'd need to take a half hour for the fix, and then put the instrument in a drawer for a week or two, calling yourself every few days to ask "is it done yet?"

It's a good feeling to be self-sustaining as far as making your chroms work nicely....also, after you get into the fearless, but cautious, horn-smashing mode yourself, you can easily set things up for your own playing, rather than make a friendly professional smasher guess how you play.

I'm sure I'm telling you stuff that you already know, and I'm probably sounding obnoxious in even writing it out. I'm trying to avoid practicing right now. 

Good choice of instrument, though. The deluxe 270 is, in theory, a great instrument. Your job is to make it play like the factory people think it already does. (A Dick Gardner quote)

My site has a bunch of helpful and "helpful" stuff about the 270 Deluxe, and nothing of interest about any other harmonica instrument. Http://jonkip.com.

If you have questions about the deluxe and can't find the answer, feel free to email me and I can usually add some confusion to your day, with a 70-30 % chance of actually being of help.

I've had some students who say "I'm just not mechanically inclined", and only one proved to be correct in his self-assessment. He was able to break the door handle to my practice room just by using it. He DID, however, remember to open the door before breaking it  and entering, so you have to give him that. I think in Real Life, he had been a trombone player, which certainly explains a lot.

That said, I'm sure every horn-smasher out there has done his/her share of cleaning up after a misguided Do-it-Yourself-er.

When you do have your horns professionally worked on, it's like getting a lesson, if you take the instrument apart and see what he/she did. That worked out great for me, Dick Gardner provided me with a great education, and some terrible puns and "jokes" , for which there was no extra charge.

All this reminds me that I'm almost out of Saltines.....guess it's time to go to Costco for a 124-pack of the crackers.


jk

> On Apr 1, 2016, at 12:08 PM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> Subject: [Harp-L] Chromatic Repair?
> To: Harp-l Harp-l <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID:
> 	<1053412618.1149406.1459528885733.JavaMail.yahoo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> 
> Any chromatic repair techs in the Detroit area?1 hole draw out on a pretty new 270 delux. so frustrating!

jon kip
jon@xxxxxxxxxx