Re: [Harp-L] Custom Harmonicas - Worth It?

[Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx>]

On Apr 15, 2008, at 2:53 PM, Frank Evers wrote:

> Am Dienstag, 15. April 2008 schrieb Vern Smith:
> > I think that as a hard player troubled with reed failures, you
> > would be a good tester for Seydel stainless steel reeds.  It seems
> > likely to me that SS reeds would not fatigue as quickly as
> > copper-alloy reeds do....maybe not at all.  You could report your
> > experience to us.
>
> I've seen many reports of broken Seydel SS reeds. They are subject to
> fatigue, probably not as quickly, but they break. Additional research
> for optimized reed profiles might make them still sturdier, i don't
> think Seydel has reached the optimum yet.
>
> --  
> Gruß,Frank

All metals suffer from the same enigma. The 'Mix'. The gold standard  
in the U.S. is .995. Bullion can go anywhere from .991 to .999. I  
don't think they are as touchy with brass. I think that brass may be  
as low as .873. It would take too much fluxing and there would be too  
much loss of dross to make brass finer than this. Specks of silica  
can really do havoc.

Soo, what do we have? Well, we could have 1000 reeds of which 873 are  
pure and 127 which are absolute garbage. This isn't going to happen.  
It's more likely that 87 reeds will be pure and 913 will have 'some'  
impurities. Even more likely, 8 will be pure and 992 will have some  
impurities. Some more than others. You might have as high as 330-335  
which are suspect as to content.

What this means is that there is almost NO probability of getting ALL  
good reeds in a harp. Since William F. Buckley is no longer with us,  
I take it upon myself the burden of educating everyone to the  
possibility that in a harp of 20 reeds. at least 6-7 will be 'iffy'.  
It isn't a matter if IF one will fail, it's a matter of when.

Then, if this weren't enough, the milling process can be sloppy. This  
will also create problems.

smo-joe