[Harp-L] Re: was Renny, now Chmel

[Jonathan Ross <jross38@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for the late reply, but thanks to Frank Evers for more  
information about Franz Chmel's chromatic ideas (all quotes Frank's).

> The first time i read about this new harmonica was in Didi Neumann's
> Harmonica-Player-News No. 54 (it´s in german, so it´s probably not
> interesting for the vast majority of u if you wonder why you never
> heard of it) in spring 2007:

Not reading German that would explain why it was news to this list.

> This means like Franz Chmel and Lutz Nölle built a new chrom and the
> first tests are very promising, but testing is still in progress.
> ...new valve design...  ...they´re going to produce this new
> instrument themselves...
>
> Franz , being asked about it on the "harpchat" mailinglist responded
> that he had already tested  the new chrom more then 200 hours and also
> played a few live gigs with it, he couldn't go in detail though.

Sounds interesting, I look forward to seeing more about it when they  
get to production.

> translation:
> "About your answer regarding durability:
> I play only chrom...very loud...with a lot of vibrato
> At my Hohner Super 64s, that i played for over 20 years, the first
> reed failed after aprox. 25 hours of playing. After that 4-6 reeds a
> week broke. I'm keeping record of broken reeds :))
> Now we have steel reeds...the result:
> I'm playing already over 1000 hours!!!!!!!!!!! WITHOUT a single broken
> reed and WITHOUT retuning. But again: i'm playing Chrom!!
> That for now... more in a few month on my new website:))"

That's good, though I've always wondered how he manages to go through  
reeds so quickly.  Certainly it's not the norm for most classical  
chromatic players.  It is a pretty good testament to the durability  
of these steel reeds (I assume from Seydel).

> So that new harmonica will have steel reeds and innovative valves.
> On a third occasion i remember him writing about this harmonica
> something like "It will all be new" meaning full of innovations.

Very good, it's always nice to see something truly new coming around.

> A rumor i heard ist that the reed plates do not have just one
> continous thickness, but that they´re thicker on the low notes and
> thinner on the higher ones, but i don´t know where i heard that
> anymore.

That sounds intriguing.  Certrainly graduating the size makes sense  
from a scaling perspective, though it presents some rather  
significant design challenges: how to maintain a slot at right angles  
with the comb on a reed-plate which is not at a right-angle to the  
comb.  I suppose you could do a stair-case reed-plate, but that would  
be rather expensive to manufacture (from what else you wrote I got  
the impression this was not simple a Super 64X arrangement, but  
rather a continuous change from low to high).

Thanks for the info, and I will be excited to see the website when  
this does come out.



JR Ross