RE: [Harp-L] XB-40

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

==David Fairweather:

>>Is there anybody else out there who is putting serious effort into
>the XB-40?   Winslow uploaded a
>>tune many months ago.  Is that it?

==Chris Michalek:

I had one and played with it for about two months.  I could play it
but I think the tone is too thin for it to be useful for anything
other than a trick effect.

==Steve Shaw:

I think it has a loud but dry tone (odd for a harp) and it only
responds well when played hard. I have a low D and a G. The latter is
the only one I use at the moment and that only sparingly.

==Winslow:

I'm a little mystified by Chris' comments, slightly less by Steve's.

For me the tone is far from thin. The loud-playing-only comment is
somewhat true, but considering the environment of playing acoustically
with other intstruments, I don't find that a disadvantage.

My feeling is that you have to fully inhabit the instrument to get it
to produce tone. This is true of any harmonica ,but the XB-40 has its
own set of playing requirements that are different from both standard
diatonic and chromatic. You have to meet it on its own terms. One thing
that makes the XB different is that all the sound seems farther away
from the player somehow, and this creates an impression that it is
distant, unpresponsive, and tonally weak when in fact it is none of
these.

I've been playing out-of-the-box XB-40s for over a year now, with G and
A my most often-used keys and preferring the G of those two (they're
the two keys that let me play most of the fiddle tunes I'm involved
with). I also use a low D, and the piggish nature of this beast led me
to finally crack open my XB's and start embossing and gapping, as well
as re-tuning, as the stretched tuning in the upper octave puts me even
more out of tune with the fiddlers as they stretch their pinkies not
quite far enough on some of those high notes on the already ungrateful
E-string.

By the way, I want to express admiration for what David has been doing
with his XB - both the jazz instrumental and the horn lines playing
along with the Ray Charles record.

Winslow



		
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