[Harp-L] Of My "Manish" Introduction to the Hohner XB 40

[Bradford Trainham <btrainham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

With me... always..., it's a long story. 
So..., I don't drive.  It's a good thing since I'd likely be driving
the wrong
direction if I did. 
Since I don't, I use a service of the local bus company we call
Special
Transit, thus embracing all possible connotations, good and bad... of
that
word "special". 
One of my regular drivers is a musician, and as my harmonica
involvement
insists on unfolding, he's been one to listen, sometimes with a
mixture of
sympathy and guitarist's amusement to my various stories of learning
new things about harmonicas and
their place in my musical world. 
So one afternoon, I told him how I was getting more comfortable with
the
Strnad mic and how I'd used it now several times at a practice and was
looking
forward to gigging with it and so on. 

A man on my right who had been content to sit quietly suddenly perked
up and
asked what kind of harmonica I played. 
He being blind also, assumed correctly from my voice that I'm white
and so he
asked if I played Blue Grass or country? 
I told him I was more into a folkish Blues that I didn't quite know
how to
intelligently describe and he allowed as how he considered himself "an
excellent harmonica player". 
I had met this man in passing several times before, and what I
remembered
about him wasn't that he played music but that he always turned the
conversation to Viagra such that one might imagine he thought about
Viagra
and vigor or its absence a lot. 

So when he wanted to talk about harmonicas, I (inwardly) sighed with
relief
thinking I might learn something and be spared his impressions of the
wonders
of Viagra. 

I did learn something, but a man must remain true to his inherent
calling...
and...
He said he played a lot of harp and he further said he'd just found
out about
these Hohner XB 40's and that they made bending easier and were
incredibly
loud. 
In browsing the various pages, I'd seen descriptions of these
harmonicas and
noticed their price as being a bit higher, but as he described them, I
was
seized with a devil's possibility for a pending gig and I (inwardly...
as I
couldn't get a word in edge-wise) resolved to order myself one just to
see
what all the XB buzz was about. 

Oh, and before we came to this man's apartment to drop him off, he
did, in
fact observe that they'd been using the old song I'm Ready in a Viagra
commercial but they had to "pull" (his words) that because of royalty
conflicts with the music. 
So I bade him good day and... after a bit of help from the amused
driver, we
shook hands, the same being our mutual intent unknown to either of us.
So I ordered this XB 40 and a harmonica case and waited to see what
life-changing possibility a UPS parcel might bring. 

Three days later, I was opening the box and listening to my wife's
nagging
about how I'd sure bought a lot of harmonica stuff lately. 
And there it was in its case, the XB 40. 

Being terminally imaginative, I'd ordered my first in the key of c. 
I determined which end was which and commenced to blow. 
For some reason, the XB part of the harp was exactly as I'd imagined
it would
be. 
You can bend almost any note... any kind of way and have it somehow
work. 
I had imagined it being easier to play say, the Blues in c on a c
harmonica
and as it turns out, you can do that and not have it sound
forced/stilted. 
And it's loud!!!!  Not just loud!!  But loud in a way that says,
someone must
have listened to a lot of Chicago Honking harp and decided they wanted
to honk
even if all the electricity of the whole of civilization was somehow
permanently turned off... 
So they designed this harp with the feeling of electricity somehow
embedded in
the harmonica itself. 

And somehow, its bulk, its heaviness... contributes to that notion of
there
being a small dirty amp and the smell of a small dirty club late at
night inside the harp itself. 

I tried it with the Strnad and the neck rack... and though that was
indeed a
snug fit, it worked quite well. 
The only thing I can't do with this harmonica is get that beautiful
open tone
like Dylan or one of the folk people would get from an un-amped,
un-close-range-mic'd harp. 
If you play soft, it just sounds like less voltage, but it still has
that
feeling to it... like somewhere... a wire snakes its way toward a
power
source. 
So time passed and I did gig with it.  That went well enough, but I
still feel
like I don't know this one as well as I'll come to know it and even
though
it's diatonic, it feels like something else and I notice, as I play
it, my
standard diatonic orientation just doesn't apply the same way. 
I have to calculate more when I want to play a note loud so it won't
bend, so
right now, there's this anticipation buffer. so to say that has to run
a few
notes ahead of me when I'm doing what passes for a solo. 
I suspect that eventually, I'll get more into the XB part and develop
cheesy
simulations of what a slide guitar does, but that's all going to be
down the
road a bit. 
This still strikes me as a novelty harmonica, (novelty within a family
of
novelties)  but I felt that way about the electric guitar for years
before it
finally insisted to me on a mutual familiarity. 

I'm still (thanks largely to information I've received as a lurker
here about
harmonicas/tunings I've never heard of) casting about for my perfect
"comfort
blanket" harmonica.  I don't think the XB 40 would ever be that, but
it's
interesting and within a given context, quite powerful. 

So, does anyone use this harmonica regularly?  
I could imagine having a few others in Blues-favored keys, but for
much of the
kind of harmonica I play, I'd miss that "acoustic-ness" that this
harmonica
doesn't seem capable of providing. 
Do any of the other companies make anything specifically designed to
bend so
effortlessly? 
Brad Trainham