RE: [Harp-L] Thorens

["Tom Klingl" <tom.klingl@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thorens is a Swiss company located in Sainte-Croix in the Swiss Jura, not
far from the border to France. They started out as a family-owned business
building music boxes in 1883. Sainte-Croix used to be the center for that
and the whole of the Swiss Jura is also known as "Watch-Valley" due to the
early established precision engineering industry. There are small and
mid-sized factories all over. 1914-1952 Thorens produced harmonicas. You can
see them on one of the pictures in the linked cronicle (in German).
http://www.thorens-info.de/html/thorens-zeittafel.html.

Nowadays Thorens builds some of the world's best turntables for vinyl
records and pretty awesome analog HiFi equipment
http://www.thorens.com/turntables/drives.html. I used to own a TD126 MK III
myself and it was fabulous.

Back to harmonicas: There was one for sale on Ricardo (the Swiss "ebay") a
while ago. I am sending you the link for the pictures
http://www.ricardo.ch/kaufen/musik-und-musikinstrumente/blasinstrumente/mund
harmonikas/thorens-mundharmonica-nr161-in-ovp-made-in-switzerland/v/an642049
890/

I assume if they were built the same way as Thorens's other equipment that
they must have been pretty good. I guess that some people here in
Switzerland still could build some pretty awesome harmonicas if they wanted,
but I doubt that they could compete...

Cheers folks

Tom


-----Original Message-----
From: sheltraw@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:sheltraw@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 7:54 AM
To: harp-l
Subject: [Harp-L] Thorens


Hi folks

On another thread David Priestley (thanks David) mentioned a Swiss made
chromatic harp called a 'Thorens' which was a 12/48 slide un-valved three
octave instrument. David mentioned that these harps were built with tight
tolerances and leaked very little air.

Does anybody else know of these harps and their quality? Anybody have one?

Cheers!