[Harp-L] The story of the Seydel steel reed

[David Payne <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

With all the talk about the steel reeds in the 1847, I ought to pass this on for consideration. Get some milk and cookies, curl up on the couch, and I'll tell you the story of the 1847.  
Besides the observations I've made, I've got a lot of confidence in the Forty Seven steel reed because of its remarkable story. This isn't something they just thought up the other day and rushed into production. It has a very long history, considering it just came out last year.
Seydel has worked on this steel reed for probably 40 years. I had a little bit of a relationship with Seydel a little while before the 1847, back then, at that time finally had a little cash coming in, had some great employees, great harp and pie-in-the-sky ideas. They were hours from going under in 2004 when Niami Media swooped in and bought it. 
The new owner was a West Germany company, the Seydel factory has no idea what to expect... after reunification, the West Germans went east in much the same way the U.S. carpetbaggers went south after the War Between the States. That's not what happened, over time, the media company has nutured Seydel and helped it grow. It was like Seydel was frozen in time from the 30s, the communist DDR overlords had changed nothing during its 60 years, they still made harps by hand and did business with handshakes, 2004 was a very scary time for Seydel... besides wondering what would happen to this company, there was a bit of patriotism in it as well.  Hohner has been a subsidiary of the KHS Investment Group in Taiwan for 10 years now.  That's not meant as a slight to any of the talented people Hohner has in Germany or Richmond, that's how it is, no matter how you look at it, Hohner is a Taiwanese-owned subsidiary with production facilities in China and Germany. I
 wish it were different, I really do. I was a die-hard Hohner man for 25 of the first 30 years of my life.. 
The harmonica's soul is Germany. Despite where the free reed originated, the harmonica is a German instrument, created and developed by scores of companies. It's like a national pastime. So Seydel knows if they go under, besides the loss to their livelyhood and the fact nobody wants the world's oldest maker of anything to die under their watch, there will be no more German harmonica companies.
 Karl Pucholt has been the Seydel factory manager/engineer since dirt was invented.  One of the greatest genuises the harmonica has seen. I've read some of his DDR patents (slowly, they are in German), they were good designs, mostly to make harmonicas that could be produced cheaply on a large scale for the Soviet Union, etc.. All this time, he is working on this revolutionary steel reed.
Imagine you are at work and your company has you doing all these tedious things, but you get this dream, in Karl's case it was a steel harmonica reed, while you are still young. You know your business environment sucks, talking about Seydel's former DDR Communist Party overlords here, they don't care about quality and have no vision, but you have this dream you know will never see the light of day, but you spend all your waking hours thinking about it, your sleeping hours dreaming about it... ...
Someday, hopefully far off, Karl will no longer be with us.The steel reed, something every harp company has wanted to make for years, is a hell of a footprint to leave in the world. This reed is Karl's legacy. I'm sure he is very aware of that. He has poured every ounce (milliliter for our metric subscribers) into this reed over most of his long career..  
So after Niama bought/rescued Seydel, Seydel says, by the way, we have this steel reed
As far as the company is concerned, they've enough faith in this reed to stake everything on it... they were some little guy playing poker with the big boys and shoved all the chips in cause they thought they had a royal flush. 

With all this in mind, with the decades this has been in development and the fact it is a great reed as is, it is in continual development. Seydel has developed this for decades, but only commercially made it for a year, in that sense, it is still new. There will be improvements. If ever the holy grail of stock harp perfection is achieved, it will be with this harp....


Dave
_______________________
Dave Payne Sr. 
Elk River Harmonicas
www.elkriverharmonicas.com