Jonathan Ross wrote:
<Steve Baker writes (in regards to Country tuning):
<
<"interest more players in the many wonderful options the raised 7th
<in 5-draw offers (though I never raise 9-draw und never really
<grasped the reason for doing so),"
<
<It depends on whether you want to keep a blow bend in hole 9 or have
<an octave available in the draw. It's also a matter of ease--if you
<swap reedplates from an LO to make a country tuned harp you'd have to
<retune the 9 draw back down.
In my opinion the main reason NOT to raise the draw 9 reed is that
by doing so you lose the original note (the flat 7th in second
position, natural 4th degree of the scale in first position). Once
the pitch of the draw 9 reed is raised, there's no way to get the
original note in the top octave short of an overdraw on draw 8,
which is not a very stable note in most cases. On the other hand,
it's easy and stable to get the raised note on an unmodified harp
by bending the blow 9 reed down.
I agree that it's easy to do the reedplate swap on an LO, and it's
even more attractive because you get two very usable harps out of
it. But it's really not much harder to tune the draw 5 reed up a
half step, and in my experience the reed is pretty durable afterwards.
I can think of one case where using the raised draw 9 reed might be
very useful--if you were planning to use the harp in a 3rd position
major mode (as opposed to the normal minor mode of 3rd position on
a standard Richter harp). Then you'd have consistent chording all
the way to the top of the harp.