Re: [Harp-L] Filisko harps-- Filisko is from Mars perspective...

[Pierre <slavio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Froggy said:

I mean, Joe, Richard and Jimmy are not E.T. from Mars!

No, the're not (Filisko Gordon, ...) from Mars, but they might as well be.
They have spent something like five thousand hours building harps and
refining their technique.

What makes it so difficult (at least when gapping) is that its very hard to
converge to the sweet spot (20 times!). Partially because there are several
things to get right like:

1) The right reed down angle into the slot at the rivet end to minimize
leakage while not impairing playability.
2) The right arc to create the gap (good sound and good playability).
3) At each adjustment you have to decide which of the two reeds needs to be
adjusted and in what direction i.e. more or less gap.
4) Also you have to adjust such that the variation from one slot to the next
is regular.

You need to do the above by feel and by ear. This is subjective and requires
a good "sound" memory.

If the above does not look so bad, consider that when you try and bend a
reed you have no way of knowing if a) you did too much b) too little or c)
nothing at all. Also it is not clear when to stop playing with a reed so at
some point you may diverge. I think its like Doug Tate said, you need a
'best' harp to compare with.

Because of the above its hard to figure out the heuristics to get a hole to
play perfectly. When you get a hole playing well you have a bunch more to
do.

Froggy, I realize that this does not answer your question about specifics
and I am curious too, but what's the point? are you going to start reshaping
reeds with a file and tuning them, isn't just having to gap harps bad enough
as it is?

Gotta go play,

Pierre.

PS: By the way, I do not want to discourage people who want to OB from
learning to setup their harps. Its not that hard to get "basic" overblows,
what's hard is to be able to set up an entire harp so you can play any hole
in any context fluidly and to get the tone right.