Re: [Harp-L] Seydel Session Steel: a love that lasts?

[Mike Wilbur <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike Wilbur
Chaser Key West Fishing
305-296-7201


On Aug 24, 2013, at 7:24 AM, Steve Shaw <moorcot@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Well I can report a happy ending. Ben Bouman helped me out and fixed my harp and it's playing as well as can be. Thanks for that, Ben! I think I was probably just unlucky.The second one I bought is brilliant too. I look forward to years of good service from these harps!
> 
>> Well, here's my experience. I've been a SP20 devotee for many years. But Hohner stopped making low Ds, so I moved to Seydel Session Steel. I recently bought two of these, quite an investment, after reading the rave reviews and claims about longevity. Problem solved, I was thinking.
>> I'm not a hard hitter. My harps always last me a very long time before reeds go south. But the first of my two Session Steels, less than two months old, which I have played lightly at home and just twice in pub sessions (again, quite lightly), has let me down badly. The 7-blow reed has gone flat. In all my years of buying and playing harps, this is by far the worst performance of any harp apart from the extreme cheapos I've occasionally experimented with. I'm devastated because I'm not a wealthy fellow and I can't afford to replace harps every few weeks, and, for reasons best known to Seydel, replacement reedplates cost just about as much as new harps. I would easily and routinely get almost a year of "hard" playing out of a SP20.  I suppose I could have been unlucky, but I won't be putting much trust in my second Session Steel example. Instead, I'll be digging out all those wrecks and replacing reeds in my knackered SP 20s in the hope that I have enough spares to keep me going until I don't care any more!
>> Cheers
>> Steve
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