XB-40 Retunings?

[jazmaan <dmf273@xxxxxxxxx>]

As usual the esteemed Mr. Missin has expressed everything I wish I had said about the
XB-40!  Different chords, double stops, ranges, etc. are all good reasons to want
XB-40's in different keys.

I had a chance to do my first playing out with the XB-40 for an audience on the Blues
Cruise.  I pretty much approached the blues as I normally would for the first 8 bars,
then took advantage of the extra available notes when I got to the V chord, and the
crowd seemed to appreciate the freshness of something they hadn't heard before, giving
me some spirited applause.    But I was disappointed with some clams I hit when
overexuberance caused me to unintentionally bend some notes by hitting them too hard
when I had simply wanted the unbent "straight" note to sound.    I suppose that with
more experience playing the XB-40 in a loud, live band setting the frequency of such
clams will diminish.

I'm still thinking about retuning possibilities for the XB-40.   I'm thinking that the
beast might be more controllable if some of the whole note bends were replaced by
half-note bends.    And I'm also thinking that a country-tuned major seventh might be
preferable to the dominant 7th.   I'm sure Pat Missin is well ahead of me in such
musings.  And I know that with any harmonica tuning, chromatic, diatonic or XB-40,
there's always a trade-off, you lose something to get something.