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

[Eric Nielsen <ericbarnak@xxxxxxxxx>]

Johnnie wrote:

"Just to clarify, I too had direct experience 30 or so years ago, with
swollen wood combs."

Eric: Sorry, I caught that on the reread, postsent. Zipped throught the
initial post too fast and responded--bad habit.


Johnnie wrote:

"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?"

Eric: No, I never sealed my combs. I don't think I had even heard of that
process back then. I'm not even clear on where I first heard about soaking:
Maybe Tony Glover's book. I don't have the book any more--or I would check.
I do remember other players talking about soaking or asking me if I did it.

If I'm remembering correctly, soaking was mostly experimental for me. It
did, indeed, seem to improve the playability, but it was pretty impractical
if you were jamming at a rock festival or on the beach. Who wants to carry a
glass around all the time?  And then, of course, it did seem to ruin the
harmonica pretty quickly.

But, like others have mentioned, when the SP 20 came out, I switched to
plastic combs and never looked back--until now.

Eric

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