[Harp-L] reed tuning and such

[Jonathan Ross <jross38@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tim wrote:

"I don't really understand the need for an invocation here, except to
try and make this seem outrageous."

That was the reason.  To me this does seem outrageous.

"Frankly, I don't understand why
I'd want to spend two or three hours tediously moving reeds from one
plate to another, giving myself no less than forty opportunities to
make a fatal mistake, when I could spend 20 minutes trimming and
drilling and finishing two plates to fit.  "

I suppose I can understand that, to a degree.  But I'm not sure what  
you mean by "fatal mistake".  I've found with minimal practice that  
reed-replacement is neither particularly difficult nor dangerous--I  
don't think I've ever destroyed or even damaged reeds in replacing  
them--at least beyond my first tries to learn the technique.

"Again, what's the time and risk involved in retuning an entire set
of plates by a whole tone or two?"

I'd say a couple of hours for me--less I'm sure if I practiced it  
every day.  Besides, I've never met a Hohner which didn't need some  
tuning out of the box to straighten it out to begin with.  As for  
risk--I see none.  True, you can damage a reed while tuning, but  
after you learn the proper technique there really is no risk, IMO.  I  
do much finer work on a daily basis with much greater risks and yet  
even there the proper technique will make such accidents almost  
nill.  For tuning, the technique is well known  and described and a  
week of practice is all that's needed to actually get decent at it.   
A whole tone change per reed is nothing radical nor particularly  
difficult or time consuming.

" Seems to me if there's
any "reinventing the wheel" going on here, it's in retuning or
replacing entire sets of reeds rather than simply trimming and
drilling a different set of otherwise identical plates to fit.  "

I disagree entirely.  You have reed-plate A, drilled and stamped for  
harp A but in key X, and reed-plate B drilled and stamped  
specifically not for harp A but in the key of Y which you want.   
Retuning A seems to me the much more logical and straightforward  
choice than redoing what the factory already did in the first place.

"I've fit Marine Band plates (kind of the "universal plate donor" for
Hohners) into a number of different harp bodies with a great deal of
success.  "

I am well aware of it.  I'm sure you've had success, I'm just not  
sure why do it at all for this example.

"PT Gazell plays a few harps I built him that have Marine
Band plates mounted in old handmade Meisterklasses."

Since the old MK plates are hard to find if at all and not going to  
be made anytime soon, this makes perfect sense.  A new Golden Melody  
(the example here) already has GM reed-plates, so why not just retune  
them or otherwise modify the existing plates?  To me that makes much  
more sense, particularly because neither reed replacement nor reed  
tuning is all that difficult.

"The T-Bone and
Journeyman have MB plates mounted on Special 20 combs.  "

And I've told you off-line in the past that makes no sense.  The reed- 
plates for a Special 20 and a Marine Band are the same except for the  
stamping and holes.  So why even do this?  I just don't understand.   
I'd not said so publicly because of discretion, but if you want to  
bring it up, fine by me.

"To each his own.  That's one of the reasons we have this list, so we
can share and discuss different ways of doing things"

Of course.  But that doesn't mean that I either can't, shouldn't or  
won't say when something makes no sense to me.  Perhaps I could see  
logic in reworking a reed-plate rather than replacing all the reeds,  
but then the original question was about wanting a GM in something  
other than 12TET.  I cannot possibly see that reed-plate swapping  
should even be considered compared to just a mild retuning.  That  
isn't why you mentioned reed-plate swapping, but for the examples you  
gave (lower and higher pitches) I still see no reason why retuning  
wouldn't be the logical choice.  AFAIC, it's not very difficult at all.



 ()()    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
()  ()   & Snuffy, too:)
`----'