[Harp-L] valve tips



Some recent valve cleaning experience.

I wanted to improve the response of one of my favourite older chromatics.
The harmonica's response consistent with valves sticking to the reed plate
ever so
slightly. So I decided to clean the valves a bit. But instead of using my
usual
method of running wet strips of brown paper bag between valve layers and
between valve and reed plate I decided to try white printer paper. I was
bit
concerned that the brown bags may have been leaving behind a residue for
binder in the paper.

Big mistake! The harp was virtually unplayable after the "cleaning" with
the
printer paper. 1/4 of the valves responded very poorly. But I was
determined to
restore the response of this instrument and find a better material to clean
valve surfaces. So I bought some flat coffee filter paper (the kind that
folds out
to a cone) and cut it into strips to use for the cleaning.

It worked very well! Unlike printer paper, and even brown bag paper, the
filter
paper doesn't tend to fall apart when wet and it left no nasty junk on the
valves
after the cleaning. After the cleaning with the filter paper the harp was
back to a
playable state.

While cleaning the valves I noticed something about them. The region where
the valve layers are glued together was unusually large for some valves. So
I used a reed lifter to break the glue up that holds the layers together
and thereby
decrease the size of that glued-together region. Now the harp is really
responding
nicely.

I hope this information is of use to you.

Question: In your experience are the regions where the valves are glued
together
highly variably in size?

MusiCal



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