Re: [Harp-L] Brass vs Stainless Steel

[Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 5, 2008, at 7:06 PM, Vern Smith wrote:
> You cannot just make a reed any shape you choose. There are the  
> design constraints of width, length, pitch, and stiffness/ 
> responsiveness.  There is also stress distribution.  You want to  
> spread out the bending so that it does not occur at one thin place  
> and overstress the metal.
>
> Vern

Not in the least trying to be argumentative here Vern and all you  
other fellows, and believe you me, I have no reason to doubt your  
combined expertise on these matters...TODAY. But something has been  
bothering me over the years. In fact several things. One of which is:

Do you think the people/person/entity ? who originally came up with  
the harmonica considered ANY of these things?
Me? 'I' think they looked at music boxes and trialed and errored  
until they came up with a workable prototype. MY suspicion is that  
they copied the Chinese.

Another is: Does ANYONE think that this business about tuning was  
really as involved as everyone is making it out to BE?. Me? 'I' think  
that they originally tuned the same way an organ is tuned. What's  
THAT tuning? I don't know.

I feel like the proverbial neanderthal Geico caveman sitting here on  
my lanai with my sabre toothed kitty, sipping on a Mojito. I mean,  
you guys are SO far over the rainbow in advanced thinking, I feel  
like an absolute dunce. I pick up a spl-20 and I play it. I have NO  
idea of what kind of tuning it is. If it starts to sound sour, I take  
an emory board and give it a touch up. If the slides stick on my  
chromos. I clean them. If a windsaver buzzes, I change it.

When I was a kid, we didn't have any of this. I think everyone is  
over thinking this. I think people are taking something that worked  
in the FIRST place, and trying to justify WHY it works. I mean, I  
like explanations as well as the next guy, but some of this stuff is  
way deep and (frankly) over my head.

Now here's what I found out about steel. I once made a reed from a  
Schick copper clad steel razor blade, and while I left the bottom  
alone, I had to shave the top so much that you had to keep chap stick  
on it to keep it from rusting. It was fine as long as you played it,  
but let it alone for a week or two and the reed froze up. (edges?)

Same thing happened with a Gillette super blue blade. Then the  
Wilkinson sword stainless. It DIDN't freeze up but I had to thin the  
reed so much to get it to sound on normal human pressure and not  
breath from a wooly mamouth, that the reed eventually failed. It was  
LESS than paper thin. In fact, I sliced my finger working with it. It  
was taking me 2 1/2 hours (or more) to make-seat-tune these reeds.

Conclusion: I'm not trying to cause trouble here, but I would have to  
study..really really study a harmonica before I plunked down my  
money. It's not that I'm cheap, it's not that I'm poor. I'm merely a  
pessimist. I'm not trying to blow my own horn here, but I have tried  
everything and would have written a repair book if it had ever  
entered my mind. All I see when I read the current stuff is the same  
stuff I have been doing for years. In fact, I have procedures that  
still haven't been revealed.

smo-joe (aka Obese Harpo)