RE: Big Walter's Customized Harp - Mystery Solved!

[Pat Missin <pat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Allen Stratyner wrote:
>
>Howard,
>          I'm pretty certain he used a soloist tuned 364 on "Have Mercy" on
>that recording he did with Carey Bell You can see him playing a 364 on the
>cover art. That is one of my favorite harps, and I use it on gigs a lot.

He either used the solo tuned 364, or the Marine Band Soloist 584,
which was a smaller scaled harp using the same hole spacing as the
regular 10-hole MB, rather than the wider spacing of the 364 and 365.
I'm not sure, but I don't think the solo tuned version of the 364 came
into production until after the 584 was phased out - early or
mid-1970s I believe. It could even have been one of the old solo tuned
School Band models, but I think these were phased out before WWII.

Anyway, he also used a solo tuned harp on a few other tracks. See this
page for details:

http://www.patmissin.com/ffaq/q20.html


Earlier in the same thread, Howard Chandler wrote:

>Now I'm not saying that I have any kind of golden ears or anything, but
>I really think the 364 harps have a unique characteristic signature.

I'm not sure I would say that they have a distinctive tone as such,
but I have often found them to be made to higher standards than
Hohner's usual 10-hole diatonics.

The reeds are also slightly different to those used on the usual
10-holers. The reeds in the lower half of the 364 and 365 are a
fraction wider than typical MB/S20 reeds. Also, if we compare a G
364/365 with a 10-hole G, the reeds in the first three holes are
slightly longer. Not sure it's enough to make any really enormous
differences, but they are about as different as the "Classic" Hohner
reeds are from the MS reeds. 

>I'm not saying that this is soley responsible for giving Mr. Horton his
>famous deep, but brassy tone, but I would be curious to know how many of
>his beloved recordings were done using this harp.

Well, there is one big clue to this.

Before WWII, the 364 and 365 were made in a wide range of keys,
although not all 12 of them.

However, some time after WWII, the range of keys was seriously
reduced. By the 1960s, both the 364 and the 365 were only available in
the keys of C and G. So if you hear Horton playing a tune recorded in
the 1960s and he was playing an A harp, it's very unlikely to have
been done on a 364!

That said, the European market version of the 364 was the Echo Vamper
and it was available in all 12 keys up until some time in the early
1970s:

http://www.patmissin.com/ffaq/q11.html

As Horton toured Europe in the 1960s, it is entirely possible that he
acquired some Echo Vampers - certainly Rice Miller did.

That said, the Echo Vampers in the keys of C to F# were tuned an
octave lower than the usual 10-holers and offhand I can only think of
a couple of tracks where Walter was playing a harp in a
lower-than-usual key, both of these tracks being on the now
unavailable LP "Solo Harp" (Document DLP 575), which also features his
only issued recording playing chromatic.

But I digress...

Anyway, if you really like the 354 models, you might want to drop
HarpHouse a line and ask if they have any left of the shpment that had
specially made up in a wider range of keys.

 -- Pat.