Re: Future of the Marine Band

[GREENWAY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Christian wrote:
|But really if wood was so good, why would they bother with varied plastic
|bodies in the upper end chromatic harps. the Lee Oskar harps have a good
|reputation and their design feels great on the lips. Let's face it, this is
|the age of technology!

Christian, you're giving Hohner WAY too much credit. Hohner's shift from
wood to plastic had a lot less--if anything--to do with improving quality
than it did with avoiding the hassles of working with the pear wood most
commonly used in Hohner combs. Pear wood is a soft wood. Hohner used to
stack their pear wood carefully and cure it for several years before using
it in their harmonicas. They stopped curing it for so long and then they
found that the chromatic combs made from the unseasoned pear wood cracked
a lot more often. They also wanted to get away from those irritating four
small nails on each Marine Band cover plate, but they found that when they
tried to use screws instead these combs also had a tendency to crack.
Instead of going back to seasoning the wood properly, they started making
chromatic combs and the combs of the newer diatonic models out of plastic
instead. I'll admit that the plastic combs with screwed-on cover plates
sometimes provides a better seal, but part of the reason that the Marine
Bands leak more than their plastic cousins is that the wood combs are
milled pretty crudely and unevenly. Hohner went to plastic to cut costs
and to get away from the difficulties of working with wood.

It just doesn't follow that plastic is a superior material for harmonicas
just because it's a more modern substance. In the process of writing my
book I talked with a slew of great chromatic players who came of age
before World War II--fantastic players like Charles Leighton, Jerry Murad,
Stan Harper, Blackie Schackner, and Pete Pedersen. None of these guys
will go near a plastic-combed chromatic. They're all still hoarding and
repairing their old 270s and 280s. Some might put this down to these guys
being old stick-in-the-muds, but I don't buy it.

I'm realizing that I may be coming off here like a dinosaur myself.
In my own defense, I have a few of Joe Filisko's brass harmonicas and
I love them, so I don't necessarily despise anything besides wood.
But I also have a couple of Joe's reworked wood Marine Bands, and they're
also among my favorite harps. Plastic harps tend to have a brighter sound,
and I can see why players who specialize in styles like bluegrass would
gravitate toward them. But I guarantee you that the boys in the Hohner
labs didn't run around ecstatically waving their first plastic harmonica
prototypes and raving about how this new substance would make the
instruments SOUND better. It just made them easier to produce.

I'm glad to hear that you're working on not playing quite so hard. Over
Overplaying is far and away the most common problem among harp players.
It's especially apparent in a lot of the Little Walter imitators; it's
very obvious from his recordings that Walter played very relaxed and at
a fairly low volume most of the time and let the amp do the work.

I caught Tim Moody's suggestion to you to park both thumbs on either
side of your embouchure to get a better seal and with all respect to
Tim I think it's bad advice. It's not true that there is no "right"
way to hold a harp. The classic grip is the way to go. The harp should
actually be supported by the left hand only (right hand if you're left-
handed like me); the other hand is used for cupping effects. Other grips
all have serious drawbacks. Using your thumbs to create your lip seal isn't
any answer; you need to figure out how to get a good seal with your
embouchure alone.

--Kim Field