RE: [Harp-L] Bushman Delta Frost harmonicas in bluegrass

["Steve Shaw" <moorcot@xxxxxxx>]

> From: "tony" <tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> Cara's comments on the Delta Frost instruments, and the comparison with
> Hohners, are useful, as she considers them from the perspective of fiddle
> tune playing. Here the requirements are different than blues. The
> instruments need to be loud, as bluegrass and Irish music is usually
> acoustic. Also a fast reed response is needed, because the tunes are 
> usually
> swift. Hence any lag in reed sounding, which may pass un-noticed for blues,
> is most apparent in fiddle tunes. Ideally the instrument should respond 
> with
> a relatively light breath pressure, as the volume of air prduced by the
> player is divided between many notes.

When you're playing fast fiddle tunes you're playing a lot in first position 
(I'm talking about standard harps or Paddy Richter here, though I know Tony 
uses his altered tunings, and to great effect too), which means a lot of 
rapid air-direction changes in a very short time.  Rapid reed response and 
the requirement for light pressure is paramount, as Tony says.  You simply 
have to have your harps super-airtight and gapped appropriately.  Speaking 
personally, I find I just can't get along with close gapping in this kind of 
music, so the overblows just have to go hang (just me, okay??).  I find both 
Lee Oskars and Special 20s to be pretty airtight OOTB, though improvements 
are possible in the case of the SP20.  When I got Tony Dannecker in the UK 
to set two up for me I noticed that he added two extra screws to hold the 
plates to the comb.  This seems to be a simple enough improvement (why don't 
Hohner just DO it!) but it significantly increased the airtight feel of the 
harps to me.  BTW, if you're in the UK and feel too impoverished to afford 
the big-name customisers, you should check him out - you pay hardly more for 
his improved Hohner harps than you would in a shop, and he'll retune them to 
your specs as well as make them airtight.  Just as important is the evenness 
of reed response throughout the range of the harp.  In this regard I have to 
say I've found SP20s to be better than LOs.  I've had a couple of sets of LO 
A plates that I just can't get even response from, try as I might with my 
limited tweaking techniques.  It isn't so bad as to be super-critical, but 
it's there.  But once I've got the harps gapped the way I need them I can't 
detect much difference between LOs and SP20s in terms of rapidity of reed 
response.  Set-up is everything, as long as the harp is of good basic 
quality to start with.

I think the XB40 falls down quite badly in the areas Tony was talking about. 
 They are loud...but that's about it.  They have a strangely dry tone 
(though whether listeners would pick up on that is another matter), but they 
certainly don't respond to light pressure and the reeds respond quite 
sluggishly.  After a few minutes' practice with one of these I feel I've 
increased my lung capacity by about a litre, and If I then pick up a SP20 
I'm in danger of blasting the reeds to kingdom come.

Steve