Re: [Harp-L] Cheap Repair Practice harps: JOHNSONS!

[Isaac Ullah <iiullah@xxxxxxxxx>]

FWIW, I had bought a 12 key set of Johnsons from C2C about 4 years back mainly as a cheap way to get some odd key harps. They were way too leakey to play well so I gave up on them and put them away. Then, about 3 or 4 months ago, I started getting into fixing up my own harps. After butchering a perfectly good C Blues Harp while trying to learn embossing techniques, I suddenly had the idea that I should be doing this sort of stuff on those old "useless" Johnsons! 
  I'll tell you this: 1) I had way less trepidation "going to town" on those Johnsons becasue I was not at all worried about ruining them. So 2) I made way less mistakes. 3) If you want to learn about embossing, you can't go wrong with a cheapo harp like a Johnson because the reedslot tolerances are SO wide. You can really emboss like crazy (in fact you MUST emboss like crazy), and you're less likely to freeze the reed up permanantly. 4) Using these cheap harps helps you learn to be very careful becasue the reeds are much thinner and flimsier, and therefore are more ease to break/bend out of shape. 
   Now I've gone through about 7 of my 12 keys. I've embossed, changed reed profiles, gapped, retuned, modified coverplates, etc., and now I feel really confident in all these techniques. Plus I've had the satisfaction of turning crappy $2 harps into very playable instruments! In fact, I like my Bb Johnson better than my Bb Blue Harp (which was my previous favorite harp). I've also not got a bunch of alternate tuned Johnsons (country in D, paddy richter C, Natural minor A, Spanish F) which are really fun to experiment on! I have no idea about what the longevity of these harps will be (really flimsy reeds), but the lessons learned from working on them will last a lifetime, and will help you make ALL your harps play better.

just a quick question to you all that repair your own harps

i think i know the answer, but checking anyway.

decided to get the lee oskar tool kit and book  and try from the beginning of this harmonica learning, to tune my own harps (good when you have no local selection).

anway, with nothing to practice on,  i wanted to know if it matter what Cheapie brand i buy to try with?

they are all cheap chinese plant ones,

i see Iolate, Hohner Piedmont, Berkeley, maybe johnson

either or?

thanks
jim