Re: Thicker reedplates = louder ?

[Pat Missin <pat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Vern wrote:
>
>For you proponents of thicker reedplates, here is a proposal:
>
>I am the proud owner of a sound level meter. I also have an air pump and a
>water manometer with which to measure its exact pressure.
>
>If someone can loan me a harp with doubled reedplates and grant me
>permission to remove the extra plates, I can find a definite, quantitative
>(in db) answer to this question. I will compare the loudness of various
>reeds machine blown at the same pressure with and without the extra plates.

As I have said before, I don't think the difference between regular
and double-thick plates is simply a matter of volume. There may be a
slight increase in volume, but I think the most noticeable differences
are timbral and in the "feel" of the instrument to the player. The
former could be easily studied with a spectrum analyser, but I'm not
at all sure how you could quantify the later.

I will see if I can put something together for you that can be easily
dismantled, yet be able to withstand being mailed across country.

In the meantime, here are a couple of samples of a harp I threw
together yesterday - the same harp recorded once with a single
reedplate, then again with the reedplate doubled. I'm not saying which
is which, but I think there is a noticeable difference. I did try to
play them as similarly as possible and I hope that several thousand
hours of experience of tuning harmonicas means that I kept my breath
reasonably even, but I confess that it was very difficult to do in
this case because of way the double-plated harmonica feels very
different to play compared with the regular one. So I post these for
the sake of curiosity, not as any sort of scientific demonstration.

www.patmissin.com/sample1.wav

www.patmissin.com/sample2.wav

They are both .wav files sampled at 44k and 16 bits, recorded using a
Shure BG4.1 via a Midiman preamp/DI into an SB Live. The harp is a Low
F Lee Oskar. Each file weighs in at around 300Kb, but I thought the
better sound quality was more important than making a small file that
could be quickly downloaded.

 -- Pat.