Re: Hering 1923

["Ben Bouman" <FITGO@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi G

Yes, the Ramos harps are wonderful to play. He says that ambossing is the
biggest part of his job and when I checked the reed slots with amagnifier I
could see that it was done close to perfection. Every slot is embossed on
the whole length and also the slot end is embossed. Every edge looks very
smooth and even. Tony mentioned something like 0,01 tolerance between reed
and slot. I noticed on a few harps that I customized that most of them had a
clearance of  0,05 mm and more.
Tony also changes the reed curve slightly. I could see that the curve was
changing on every reed , starting on 1 the reed was "curved" , sarting in
the middle part of the reed and moving up to 10 the curve on 10 started on
4/5 of the lenght. On higher pitched harps he used less curve than on the
lower ones.
He designed his own tools and had them made out of high quality steel.

Do you (or anyone else) know if it's possible to use the urethane after the
comb is treated with bees wax? (Tony's harp are waxed just a few seconds).
Sometimes he uses very,very little oil on the reedpaltes for acting as a
gasket. I can't remember which oil....

Paul Orta told me that he uses Ramos harps and they come very close to
Filisko's..
I played a Filisko(built 3 or 4 years ago) and at this moment I would prefer
the Ramos harp.
The price of Ramos harp is 110 euros( $120) , of course you can send your
harps back to him for tuning /service/changing reeds etc.
his site adress:  www.ramoshandmadeharmonicas.de

The result of his embossing is that the tone gets a little brighter, I think
this was discussed a while ago on harptalk/harp-L??
I have the same experience with my harps, they all sound brighter after
embossing but also a bit louder.


The hering harps are soaked in parafine oil, I read this in an
email(brochure) from Alberto. When you look at the comb it looks like they
also use some kind of laquer? But iw works perfectly (for me...). Soem harps
have a "strange" taste, I'm not sure if this is due to the parafine or the
laquer?

www.harponline.de is indeed a great site, finally someone who's seriously
working on giving the info everyone needs.

kind regards, Ben Bouman
Holland
www.marbletones.com