[Harp-L] Non-Oskar Tombo Diatonics

["Tim Moyer - Working Man's Harps" <wmharps@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Anyone else have any experience with Tombo diatonics not bearing the 
Lee Oskar name?  I know they're not distributed in North America, but 
a couple of years ago a European friend brought me a couple of Tombo 
Ultimos he purchased in a shop in Paris.  I liked these harmonicas 
quite a bit -- particularly after some fiddling around with them -- 
and have always been looking for more.  Last fall I ponied onto a 
friend's order from an Australian shop called "Ozwinds" to purchase a 
few more for my set, but was disappointed that the Aussies couldn't 
get the "odd keys": Ab, B, Db, Eb, and F#.  This spring a friend in 
Japan did me the HUGE favor of walking into a shop in Tokyo and 
buying the rest of these keys off the shelf.  He also sent me a Tombo 
Aero Reed, with it's polished, chromed comb and covers.

I have been using the Ultimos to build myself a set of Melody Maker 
tuned harps, retuning them, tightening the reedslot tolerances, and 
treating them with nail polish at the reed roots to enable the 
overblows.  I use this tuning pretty frequently with the jazz quartet 
I play with.  These are fabulous harps!  They sound great, they're 
extremely comfortable, the construction is high quality (imagine a 
Lee Oskar with full-length covers), and I'm hoping they'll have the 
same legendary longevity, though I haven't blown out a reed on any 
harp in 20 years.

I haven't had a chance to crack into the Aero Reed yet, but that will 
come soon.  If you'd like to take a look at these harps, I built a 
little web page for them with pictures at: 
http://www.workingmansharps.com/Other/

Highly recommended, I just wish they were easier to get!

-tim

Tim Moyer
Working Man's Harps
http://www.workingmansharps.com/