Hi Steve,
Do you know any of the history behind Hohner's "U.S. Navy Band"? It seemed very like a GM, except for the name and design on the cover plates. I found one in an old dusty music store when I was a kid, and I bought it because it looked cool. It soon became one of my favorite harps.
Eric
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Steve Baker <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John wrote:
<Steve,
When was the Golden Melody model first released? Did it have a wood comb at first? when did it start to be made with a plastic comb?
Questions I've never known who to ask......
Thanks,.
Best regards,
JP>
Hi John,
it's not so easy to answer your date question accurately, as a variety of different instruments bore (and bear) the name Golden Melody. I'll assume you're asking about the 10-hole Richter harp. The basic design is clearly 1950s and was used for a series of 100th anniversary harps in 1957, as well as for a number of similar instruments from around that time, most of which were confusingly named Marine Band, even though they bore no similarity to the Marine Bands we know (maybe it was a generic term for 10-holes at the time). These all instruments all had the characteristic rounded GM shape with full-length closed anodized gold or silver covers, but the covers were lower and the comb seemed slightly wider from front to back. Totally cool harps, I've been trying to persuade museum curator Martin Haeffner to give me one for years without success. I've not seen any earlier ones using this form and the name Golden Melody was not used at that time as far as I could establish.
The current (gold version) GM came on the market around 1975, at least, that's the first time I saw one, and was an update of the '50s instrument. It may have been available earlier though. All instruments mentioned had plastic combs from the very beginning. The 1950s ones used some sort of Bakelite material and the later (current) ones used injection-moulded plastic. Wood was to the best of my knowledge never used for this design. Unfortunately my listing of what models were made when (once again compiled by Martin Haeffner) omits any mention of the GM, whether 10-hole or octave/tremolo models,
hope this helps,
all the best
Steve
Steve Baker www.stevebaker.de www.bluesculture.com
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