Re: [Harp-L] The reed issue

[Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx>]

I have made reeds from various things (in an emergency). A split and  
flattened rifle bullet casing (it's 'annealed' at one end), and half  
of a double edged Wilkinson Sword razor blade (other blades should  
work). Also the stainless steel strips inside anti-theft devices,  
various contact points fingers from inside various electronics.
The problem would be to be able to do this is quantity. I believe  
reeds are made in 'series'. One block will be ground to a specific  
length & end weight (or not), and will cover several tones (like Ab  
to B, then C to Eb, and so on). They are later 'finished' off and  
brought into their relative tone, set in the harmonica, and then fine  
tuned by hand. Doing reeds one at a time with cuticle cutters, files,  
and stones, is VERY tedious.

smokey-joe


On Mar 23, 2007, at 1:27 PM, Zombor Kovacs wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> I have been fiddling around with harps for a while.
> The most annoying thing for most of us is the fatique
> of reeds. I guess that reed quality today is
> determined by sales figures and somewhere half way
> between what is profitable to manufacture and what
> customers still buy because they accept the lifetime.
> Maybe because they don't know that reeds can last
> longer. If they lasted longer, the harmonica lasted
> longer and sales figures would drop. Also price would
> increase because of higher reed quality.
> But I am not willing to accept that we have to use
> crap reeds, which are visibly crap. Has anybody tried
> to make reeds? Of higher quality materials, from
> different alloys with good surface etc. I would be
> interested to know more about this topic.
>
> Zombor - www.zovax.atw.hu
>
>
>
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