Re: [Harp-L] In the "old days" how long could you play an iniitally dry harp, before comb swelling occurred?

[JohnnieHarp <johnnieharp@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I would suggest that if you have an old neglected
> wooden-combed harp, try it for yourself. If for nothing other
> than to gain some historical perspective.

Thanks for the suggestion, Eric.

Just to clarify, I too had direct experience 30 or so years ago, with
swollen wood combs. At the time, I sealed a Blues Harp with marine
varnish to remedy this (worked well). I still have the harp and am in
the process of restoring and upgrading it as I prefer its form factor
to most other harps. It is narrower dimensionally, top to bottom,
which I like.

Around the time I sealed the Blues Harp, I discovered that plastic
combed harps were available in the Pro Harp and Special 20 models, so
only bought these going forward. Also found the Golden Melody model
which I preferred to the other two, mainly due to it's full length
cover plates. I also seemed to play slightly better OTB for me, for
whatever reason.

Again at around the same time, I heard or read about tine trimming and
subsequent soaking and remembered it given my personal swollen comb
experiences. At the time, I had no reason to test it as I'd, very
happily, moved on from wooden to plastic combed harps. Also, one thing
I had noticed was that when the comb swelling occurred during normal
playing, the tines also tended to change their side to side position,
effectively dis-uniforming the hole size. I thought that this would
likely still be a problem under a trim/soak model unless the tines
were somehow, positionally secured.

> It really got to be a bother, and soaking trashed out the harp
> in a short while. The whole comb was impacted by the
> swelling and shrinking and the harp got all twerped out.

Given the failure of your trimming/soaking attempts, did you come up
with another solution or work-around? Did you seal your combs? Just
grin-and-bare it? Switch to a back up as swelling occurred and became
unbearable? Add songs in more keys to your repetoire?

BTW, I recently compared the comb from a vintage 1982 Sp20 with the
plastic comb from a new Hohner Piedmont beginners harp. The combs are
99.9% identical in all ways, dimensionally and the reed plates fit the
Piedmont comb nice and tightly. I intend to use the screws that came
with with Piedmont to replace the nails in the Sp20.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts,

Johnnie