Re: Marine Band Harmonicas

["Steven D. Levine" <drsoul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2 Jun 1994 clarke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> I have been playing Marine Bands exclusively for quite a while and never have had a bad one until recently. 
> In the last few months I have had three A harps, a C and a D bad right out of the box.  They all would test OK with 
> a bellows I'm sure, because the notes were there, but I have had them stick when you get on 'em.  Thye've been
> leaky and generally poor.  I wondered if anyone else had encountered this lately?
> 
> 
> Bernie Clarke
> PS: I still won't play anything else!
> 
I bought an A and a C about a month and a half ago and they both tested 
fine with the tester. I pulled one out (I think the C) on the drive home 
(and I hope I don't revive the old "driving while playing safety hazard" 
thread :) and found out by playing it that the first two or three draw 
reeds were stuck! I was pretty pissed off, and considered trying to 
return them, but I just went home instead. I managed to fix it completely 
by removing the cover plates and unsticking the reeds (one was stuck to 
the comb, which made it sound particularly bad). I've overcome my fear of 
fiddling with the insides of my harps and I usually adjust the offset of 
all the reeds before a gig if the harp needs it. I've also experimented with 
tryint to tune my Marine Bands, but so far I'm just in the "use an OLD 
harp 'cuz you're gonna ruin some reeds trying!" stage. :-)

-Steve