[Harp-L] The Cheapie Harp Experiment: Can a cheap harp sound good?

[Isaac Ullah <iiullah@xxxxxxxxx>]

   I have many cheap harmonicas. I have them because as I progressed in the instrument, I passed from not wanting to spend too much money on it, to realizing that quality DOES matter and therefore being willing to spend more and more cash on a harp. So in the begining I bought many cheap harps, which now just sit around in their boxes and never get played. About a year ago I start working on my own harps (mostly thanks to Dave Payne's very informative video's and comments here on this list, as well as the "Monster Harp Workbench" by Kinya Pollard). Recently, I got to wondering whether or not I could make some of those crappy cheap harps play better. As many of you may also be stuck with cheapie harps which are a legacy of times gone by, I thought I'd report the results of two such experiments here. I decided to try to modify two common cheapies that I also had in my harp box: The Johnson Blues King, and the Huang Star Performer. I originally wanted to
 do both in the key of A (to be more directly comparable), but I had to do the Johnson in the Key of Ab as I messed up my A johnson with an attempt at doing a micropore gasget (which I DO NOT reccomend trying as I found it completely unnecessary and even a bit harmful if not doen PERFECTLY). I will present my findings in the following format: 1) Initial characteristics I did and did not like, including playability, bendability, comfort, aesthetics, etc.; 2) The modifications I did and why, and; 3) The results in terms of changes to the initial characterisitics.

I'll start with the Huang Star Performer in A. Price $9.95 form Amazon.com

Initial Characteristics:
1) Great body shape, easy to hold onto
2) Good heft
3) Very buzzy low reeds, but decently strong, robust reeds in general
4) Very leaky and unresponsive, especially for 2 and 3 draw. (reeds wouldn't sound unless A LOT of air was used)
6) Gapped poorly, and very poor reedslot tolerances
5) Therefore hard to bend (especially 2 and 3 draw, which are normally very easy for me)
6) Junction of coverplates and reedplates uneven and gappy
7) Coverplate design too perpendicular at "lip junction" to get a good lip-block umberture
8) Comb "teeth" not round, and therefore uncomfortable for tongue blocking 
General thoughts: It's kind of a crappy harp, but with a couple of nice characteristics. You can blow loud chords, but it was too hard to play good single notes, and even harder to get them to bend. It has kind of a brash tone in the upper octave, but is more mellow lower down. It has potential, but out of the box it pretty much sucked for me, especially for slow blues, which is what I like an A harp for. I might use it if all I was gdoing was blowing cords over rock music, but that's about it.

What I did:
1) Emboss all reed slots HEAVILY to improve reedslot tolerances and imporve airtightness
2) Change reed profile and gaps to imporove reed response and airtightness
3) "scoop" the tips of the reedslots with a file to improve initial response time
4) Sand both sides of comb (it's a solid, onepiece, plastic comb -- not like a recessed Special 20 comb -- and therefore can and NEEDS to be sanded since there are many surface imperfections that keep it from adjoining tightly to the reedplate)
5) Sand the mating surface (back) of the draw reed plate, and buff the top of the blow reedplate with many q-tips (essentially trying to flatten and remove any surface imperfections that would prevent a tight join with the comb)
6) Sand the bottom of the coverplates until it will lie flat on the reed plates (there is A LOT of sanding need to get this done, but it helps with airtightness and sound projection)
7) Used the "ball of wax" technique to stop the buzzing of the low draw and blow reeds
8) "Prewarify" (to use the Payneian term) by opening up the back of the coverplates for better sound projection
9) Change the angle of the "lip junction" portion of the coverplates to be more acute and less perpendicular to the comb
10) Use a file to round the teeth of the comb
Total Time Spent: ~3-4 hours

Results:
1) Much, much, much more comforatble to play, and much easier to get a good single note lip-block umberature.
2) Much better airtightness all around, but hole 2 draw still requires too much air
3) Better bendability, but 3 draw still funny (and much harder to control than my A Hohner Blues Harp)
4) Much better response, all around, and no more low reed "buzzing"
5) Better sound projection
General thoughts: It's gone from a crappy harp to an "okay" harp. Yes, it's easier and less painful to play, but it still sounds a bit "off", especially when playing slow blues both amped and acoustic. The crappy 2 and 3 draws are now less crappy, but still crappy enough to where I still don't like playing this harp. I think it was generally a waste of time to do all of the modifications that I did to this harp. The time invested did not realize itself in terms of imporvments to the harp. I still like the body shape though...


Next the Johnson Blues King in Ab, Price ~ $1.50 as part of the "12 key set" from coast2coast

Initial Characteristics:
1) Small, light, and purple-combed, it has a good classic look to it.
2) Recessed reedplates and rounded comb teeth make it comforatble to play (comparble to a special 20 in comfort level).
3) Surprisingly hefty coverplates (Again, more like a Special 20, and much heftier than a Hohner Bluesband, or other similarly priced harp)
4) Very leaky, although still pretty responsive
5) Poorly gapped and horribly large reedslot tolerances
6) Thin, flimsy-feeling reeds
7) Very poor projection and low volume
8) Poor bendability (because of the leakyness?)
General Thoughts: Well, this harp certainly looks more like a traditional diatonic harmonica, even though it has a purple comb. It just very very leaky and has really low volume. It's actually very difficult to hear oneself. It's also quite difficult to bend because so much air is just passing right through the thing. Decent mellowness to what tone there was, however. In general, it's just a poorly manufactured, low quality control, run-of-the-mill, cheapie harmonica that happens to come in all keys. I wouldn't count on it in any live performance situation.

What I did:
1) Embossed the heck out of the reedslots. I mean, I really embossed these suckers!
2) CAREFULLY adjusted reed profile and gapping (you can very easily damage one of these reeds, they are that thin. The 9 draw reed even had a hole in the tip from where they had filed it in the factory tuning process!)
3) Sand the mating surface (back) of the draw reed plate, and buff the top of the blow reedplate with many q-tips.
4) Removed the "spars" in bettwen the comb teeth in the comb slots with wire cutters (these are extraneous artifacts of the plastic injection molding process, and the may hamper airflow in the comb slots)
5) Sand the bottoms of the coverplates (not completely necessary in this case, but I wanted to be thorough)
6) "Prewarify" (Again in the DavePayneian sense!) by opening up the back of the coverplates for better sound projection (I thought this was really necessary in this case)
Total Time Spent: ~1.5 hrs

Results:
1) Oh wow did the harp become much more airtght. It's like a different harp!
2) Now it bends like a dream!
3) Still low on volume, but much better than before, and with much improved projection.
General thoughts: The work done on this harp SIGNIFICANTLY improved it's playablitity and tone, and there was relatively little time invested to accomplish this. It sounds much better, and I think I would even play in front of people now. The volume is still an issue if you are playing un-amplified, but not really an issue for amped harp. The quality and flimsyness of the reeds still concern me, but at ~$1.50/harp, they are easily replaced. I would mainly worry about blowing a reed during a performance, so I would not play super hard on these harps. I think that you can invest a little bit of time, and actually make this harp play decently.



   So, to conclude: I found that the Huang Star Performer could not really be improved all that much despite putting a crapload of time into it, but that the Johnson couldbe significantly improved with just a few simple mods. Would I get rid of my main line up of Marine Bands, Blues Harps, Special 20's, and Lee Oskars for a line up of all Johnsons? Absolutely not! But I will keep my "odd key" line up of modified Johnsons in harp case "just in case". I would certainly consider retuning some of my Johnsons (yes, saying "retune my Johnson" IS funny) to experiment with some "altered states" tunings. I certainly don't think I'll be buying any more Huangs, although I may just sand the ends of all my Blues Harps to have that cool "star performer" shape! I

Cheers to all,

Isaac Ullah

Disclaimer: I'm just reporting my results, yours may vary.