re: [Harp-L] Blu-Tack and Solder WAS: Optimized Blues Tuning

[enzyme rich <rmdc55@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Robert, anything sticky enough will work - a dot made with a white-out pen,
or a white-out brush, a tiny piece of skotch tape, a piece of adhesive
vinyl, all are reversible methods."

i personally only use solder because i want it to be permanent since i'm not
just experimenting anymore. i'm not going back to the standard richter
tuning. so far i have 17 harps in various keys in a major, minor  and blues
tuning. all are variations of the circular tuning (which actually has many
notes in common with the richter - only it has more notes and in different
order in some cases. holes 2 thru 6 draw, your important bendable blues
notes are actually identical in the richter and circular tuninngs.

it takes me about 2 hours to turn a richter lee oskar into a circular major,
minor or blues harp all of which are laid out to play in second position
only and are half valved. like was recently mentioned it's really important
to choose a harp that is just slightly higher in pitch than your desired new
tuning so that you are only adding material to the reed tips to change the
tone rather than taking material away from the original stock reed. so i am
only lowering the pitch on all the reeds to get the new note. actually i add
more material than what is needed and than remove some of the solder to
bring the pitch up to what i want.

the minor tuning is just a circular tuned version of something like a lee
oskar natural minor harp which is in second position.

but, my major harps are unique in that 2 draw is the root note where the
complete major scale starts and you can bend all the draw notes so you can
get bluesy on major melodies.

with all the work that goes into each harp i want it to be permanent so i
use solder

Rich