[Harp-L] Re: Suzuki Pure Harp review (long)

[Spschndr@xxxxxxx]

I got a Bb Suzuki MR-550 Pure Harp last week after reading some tantalizing 
things about it.  My example is a remarkably good production diatonic, a big 
change from Suzuki's previous track record of answers to questions hardly anyone 
was asking.

The rosewood covers certainly look nice (unanimous approval by those who've 
seen mine), but their height at the mouthpiece (20mm!) and matte finish will 
probably put some people off, and nicks hurt like dings on a new car, visually 
(Suzuki politely cautions you not to drop it).  The covers have relatively 
small openings compared to a Promaster, and those along with the non-embossed 
reedslots are probably going to have more impact on the tone than the cover/comb 
material possibly could.  One quirk of the nicely sealed rosewood comb is that 
some of the tine corners looked dinged up; apparently this wood has some tiny 
knots that are taken off the tines but left sticking out on the milled insides 
of the covers.  No impact on function in either case.  Kudos to Suzuki for 
the first properly smoothed reedplate edges I've seen on a production sandwich 
harp--IMO, it's those edges that make a standard MB uncomfortable to people, 
more than the comb tines, and the other companies would do well to emulate the 
SPH.

One problem area on mine: Daylight is visible at spots between my lower 
reedplate and the comb, looking through at the light.  That means gaps that are too 
big for spit residue to seal.  I tried surfacing the comb a bit with 
sandpaper, with no visible progress; I have to guess that the spot welds attaching the 
reeds are warping the draw reedplate slightly.  However, I micropored the 
lower comb temporarily and didn't notice a significant improvement in playing 
action, something that indicates the stock reedwork is very good.  Someone intent 
on 1OBs might want to address it, though.  Comb/plate seal is always a 
potential issue on sandwich-style harmonicas, but often does not significantly 
affect playing action.
 
My Bb played quite well right out of the box.  To me, its action seems set up 
on the borderline between hard playing and overbending; it's a bit tight to 
play really hard, especially TBing, and a bit loose to overbend really easily.  
But all the overbends are there out of the box, which is impressive, though I 
found them to demand a relaxed, precise technique.  Well, not exactly a 1OB, 
but I can get the minor-chord sound out of the 1B quite reliably, so I'm fine 
with that, and it does a nice 10OD at the other end.  

I'm ambivalent about its overbends; they don't sustain or bend up well for 
me, and I don't feel the focal point of the OBs' resonance in my mouth--my 
reference points for OBing--are quite where they are on my other Bb harps.  Someone 
who OBs better than I do may not experience that at all.  Conventional bends 
are easy and precise; half-step blow bends are excellent even on the 10B.  The 
harp's entire setup is what I call coherent; it's not tighter at one end or 
the other, and it seems set up to enable a well-defined type of playing: fairly 
hard playing with overbends.  Its equal tuning was very good, A=443-444 with 
octaves that hold together well at different playing pressures.
 
Inside, the reeds are clearly designed to last a long time--hopefully.  The 
milling at the base of the reed is sorta beveled in radius on most reeds, 
rather than the sharp right-angle cut that helps reeds die young.  There's still a 
distinct transition in thickness, but it's farther from the reed base, so 
there's less leverage exerted on it.  The 4 and 5B reeds on mine have a nicely 
rounded radius to the milling there, as though Suzuki is taking extra pains to 
make those vulnerable reeds last longer.  Oddly, the 7D reed has a right-angle 
cut.  None of the milling extends up onto the reed base a la LO reeds, which 
may well help their Asian-reed-squeal resistance; no squeals on traditional 
bends, but squeals are bothering me on sustained OBs.  The reeds have a pretty 
flat arc in a style that I think does a lot of things well; it's not the 
exaggerated arc you'll see on a Hering 1923, for example.  Flattening their pitch is 
done with lengthwise scraping like the LO handbook prescribes.

The reedslots are pretty tight; extended peering at them thru magnifiers made 
me decide the clearance is just about the same as current MB Deluxe slots.  
However, the reeds are *spot welded* in place; on the bright side, their 
alignment is superb, very parallel to the slot edges, though the entire reed may be 
closer to one side of the slot or the other.  This means an intrepid & careful 
customizer could in fact emboss the slots to bring them in further.  Depends 
on whether you like/want the tonal qualities and feel associated with 
embossing; that runs counter to what Suzuki seems to be doing with the Pure Harp, 
which seems aimed at people who want their diatonic to sound more like a woodwind 
than a brass instrument.  The fact is that this new Suzuki reedplate and the 
current Hohner handmade plates play quite well without embossing, if gapped 
well.

Which brings me to the gapping: This is the first well-gapped contemporary 
production harp I've seen.  If Suzuki has automated this, more power to them; if 
these are being gapped or touched up by hand in China, well, at least Suzuki 
is taking that step.  I'm serious; if my Bb is typical, then instead of buying 
a custom harp to learn from, you can buy one of these and learn to do one 
useful style of gapping, what I'd call the Hohner prewar formula, which is the 
closest thing I've seen to a one-size-fits-all setup.  

Now, my 3 hole played way too tight initially, too tight to play out with 
frankly; but a close look showed the 3D reed to be gapped way low, and one quick 
tweak got the 3 hole playing as well as the others.   Really, I'm pretty sure 
anyone with a reed tool and a good magnifier (about 10x is a lot better than 
2x, if you ask me) could fix a problem hole in their Suzuki simply by spotting 
the reed whose gap is out of whack with its neighbors and setting that right.  
There were a couple of other reeds on the Suzuki that I would touch up if I 
were really trying to optimize the gapping on this Bb visually, but those holes 
played well enough that I just buttoned the harp back up instead and went to 
playing it.

That right there is the crux of my Pure Harp; it is well enough gapped from 
the factory that I am happy to adjust myself to it, rather than adjusting it to 
me--no customizing in that sense is necessary.  I want to emphasize, though, 
that it definitely does not play as well as a really first-rate custom does.  
Nonetheless, it plays as well as a decent second- or third-tier custom that's 
set up at the edge of overbending in terms of tightness of feel.  If my sample 
is typical, that's a significant achievement for a production diatonic 
regardless of price.  This harmonica is what uninformed people *think* they're going 
to get when they pay more for an MS Meisterklasse or (old-style?) Promaster 
or MB Deluxe.

I have to say that I think Hohner has improved the action of its handmade 
models more than  most people seem to have noticed (the Iceman just mentioned 
it), over the last two years; I've noticed that most MB Deluxes are very 
tolerable for traditional playing and the 6OB is right there; much of the reason for 
this is that they are considerably better gapped than they have been for many 
decades.  However, they're invariably inconsistently gapped.   Like I said, 
there were three reeds on my Suzuki that I would adjust, and only one was 
mandatory; I just looked at a brand-new G MB Deluxe that plays well, and there are 
five reeds that I would adjust, based on a visual survey, in order to fully 
balance the playing action up & down the harp.  There's a tipping point where a 
harp ceases to play coherently and predictably well if the gapping is too 
inconsistent.

To paraphrase a recent campaign slogan, it's the reedwork, stupid.  Hohner 
has gotten a long way back toward the level of their prewar diatonics that were 
gapped by skilled workers, but my Suzuki is all the way there and then some.  
If mine's typical, then this is a harmonica you can trust to be set up 
correctly; it'd be worth the $50+ for a novice to buy a Fire Breath to learn to play 
on, IMO, if they're serious about learning to play.  Hohner, Seydel, Hering, 
Oskar and others: Suzuki just raised the bar--you're going to need to offer at 
least one model that's consistently gapped and tuned well.  People *will* pay 
for that, judging by sales of the new Suzuki models.

For my own part, the reason I'm not ordering a bunch more of these new 
Suzukis is because I can build myself something better and I'm ambivalent about the 
way their coverplates interact with my hands.  I don't like holding Promaster 
coverplates, and like GMs better for the fully-enclosed-coverplate sound; 
incidentally, you can bolt Hering 1923 covers right on this Suzuki if you're after 
a MB coverplate thang.  I don't have any quarrel with its playing action at 
all, given that it seems intended to balance overbends with hard playing--it's 
really impressive.  I don't like equal tuning for most of the playing that I 
do, so I may put mine into a JI variant.  But this harmonica in Fire Breath 
form is very good value for the money if the reeds last long at all; the Pure 
Harp is going to be a $40 or so matter of personal preference where the 
coverplates are concerned.

I had fun playing out with mine.  The rosewood covers' smallish openings (and 
possibly their thickness) put the tone into the SP20/GM end of the spectrum 
even with my small hands; it's reasonably loud, but does not have the presence 
of an embossed harp.  The balanced action makes it a very trustworthy harp to 
play out on; even though it's tighter than I normally would use in the jam 
night situation I was in, I just adjusted--I didn't pull out another Bb, and that 
says a whole lot right there.  Backed someone up on a couple tunes in C, a 
slow major blues and a fast swing, and enjoyed the equal tuning.  For whatever 
reason, my Pure Harp will growl like nobody's business on a 2D bend and I had 
to force myself not to overdo that.  The other song I used it for was a fairly 
faithful version of LW's "Blue Midnight," which is my usual test for how 
harps/mics/amps work for me.  Pretty satisfying there; I don't like equal tuning 
for that song, and I wanted the bright end of the tonal spectrum extended a bit, 
by embossing for example, but then there were those 2D growls as 
compensation, and little problem hitting the trickier moves in the tune despite the very 
unfamiliar shape and height of the coverplates.

Five stars, if you haven't guessed; I've never bought anything else stock 
that I'd have given more than four.  These Suzukis may well mark the start of a 
new era of the production diatonic, because they deliver a customizer's setup.  
It's an off-the-rack setup, mind you, but one I think is going to suit as 
diverse a group of buyers as is humanly possible.  A top-flight customizer can 
still build you something better that fits you better, but you'll pay more and 
wait longer for it.

I watched Suzuki do the same thing in the motorcycle market in the 1970s and 
1980s--lower the price of boutique performance--and they forced an entire 
industry to raise its game twice.  This should be fun to watch.

Stephen Schneider