[Harp-L] Hohner Blues harp vs. Marine Band... and repair !!!

[Captron100@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 6/6/2005 8:18:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, tim moyer  
writes:

This  harp is different from the Marine Band in many respects.  It 
has  different external dimensions and the reedplates come off a 
different  production run than the Marine Band with different 
dimensions for the  reedslots. 


Coincidentally, last week a friend of mine was so frustrated with his new  
Blues Harp that he was ready to throw it away.  I took a look at it and  spent 
an hour trying to improve it's playability.  The gaps were not too  bad.  I've 
had many better playing harps with larger gaps.  It looked  to me that this 
Blue Harp has alot of extra tolerances in the reed  slots, both along the sides 
and at free end.  Lots of extra space.  
  Interestingly, the tuning marks showed that the Hohner employee who  tuned 
this BH must have used a small rotary device - each reed's end showed  a small 
clean gouge at the tip of each reed, not like the long tuning marks one  
usually sees.
  I embossed the reed slots fairly aggressively, and tho i improved  the 
playability, i never did get it to play as responsively as i would have  liked.  
The embossing revealed 2 reeds off center, so they stuck and had to  be 
centered.
  Question: do the dimensions of the BH reedslots make for a poorly  
responding harp?
ron