[Harp-L] Replaceable reeds - Harmonic Reed All American Design

[Ronnie Schreiber <autothreads@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Considering that the patents are expired, with companies now offering 
alternate, and in the case of at least Seydel, custom tunings, I'm 
surprised that nobody has ever considered putting the Harmonic Reed Co 
All-American harmonica design back into production. It's quite an 
ingenious design, rather elegant. Since that company was in business for 
a while, I'm guessing that the cost of production wasn't significantly 
more expensive than with conventional reed plates. Back then I'm sure 
there wasn't a market for alternate tunings, but their system of 
individual miniature reed plates for each reed that can be easily 
removed and replaced seems ideal for coming up with all sorts of 
alternate tunings without having to resort to dealing with rivets or 
tiny screws and nuts. Also, obviously, it would make replacing reeds 
that blow out much easier.

Has anyone on the list played one of these? How air tight are they? The 
patent drawings that I've seen indicate that the small, vertical, 
reedplates slide into bakelite slots in the equivalent to a comb. Since 
it's just a press fit, I wonder how air tight the design is. Of course, 
with modern materials, some kind of seal, perhaps out of Teflon, 
probably could be co-molded in place.

I'm going to show the patent drawings to the 3D printers that I'm 
working with to see if they can reproduce the housing and removable 
mouthpiece. It seems to me that using some kind of punch press or die 
cutting machine, conventional reedplates could probably be sliced up 
into individual components for each reed, assuming it can be done 
without distorting the plate.

Ronnie Schreiber
Harmonicaster.com