[Harp-L] Re: The Great comb debate

[Michael Easton <diachrome@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

You may want to rethink the comb gasket idea Aongus.

We had a discussion here about 11 or 12 years ago on gasketing combs.
Micropore was the rage at the time.

I bought a vacuum former and pressed my own gaskets over a Marine Band  
comb using a thin neoprene material.
While the gasket made the test Marine Band air tight it sounded  
muffled like I was playing into a foam pillow.
There was very little transference of the reed vibration to the plate  
and non to the comb.
Gasketing harps is a bad idea IMHO.  If it's that leaky you shouldn't  
even bother buying them IMHO.
Switch harps or brands.

You are in the right direction with working on your tone.  I'm at the  
point now where I don't depend on
volume pots on my mics or custom harps.  I parked all my custom  
diatonics, including the ones I built,  on the shelf and just play
stock diatonics now.


On Sep 3, 2010, at 6:29 PM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 21:18:18 +0100
> From: "Aongus Mac Cana" <amaccana@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Harp-L] The Great Comb debate
> To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID: <58EAE2D15D14482AA3B1BF05E393D8B2@fujitsu2bq5kq4>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"
>
> OK Kids,
> As far as I am concerned Rick Epping and Winslow Yerxa have said it  
> all to
> the satisfaction of my simple mechanical engineering mind.
> The quality of the interface beween comb and reedplate is the issue  
> - not
> the comb material.
> One of these days I am going to try a reedplate gasket. In the  
> meantime
> perhaps I should just concentrate on playing the darn thing and try to
> involve my sound box (a.k.a. my airways) in producing a decent tone.
> Beannachtai
> Aongus Mac Cana

Michael Easton
www.harmonicarepair.com