[Harp-L] New Golden Melody

[Tim Moyer]

 I respectfully disagree with the statement:"The only way to ensure that harmonicas overbend reliably out of the box would be to adjust the reed offsets" There are several production harmonicas that overbend reliably out of the box: like the Suzuki Manji  I don't know that the Manji is not hand-adjusted in the factory for overbends but the cost is not that much hiher than the new Golden Melody. It's possible that labor costs for the Manji are appreciably lower than for the GM allowing for more hand-tweaking. Steve probably knows more about this than me. I agree the old GM had issues with airtightness and that the new one addresses many of those issues with its new design. I like it but if I didn't have a high quality working customized gig set I would probably  invest the money to acquire a tweaked set
-tim

    On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 10:42:24 AM CST, Steve Baker <booking at xxxxx> wrote:  
 
 The only way to ensure that harmonicas overbend reliably out of the box would be to adjust the reed offsets accordingly in the factory. This involves a lot of extra work, which would make the instruments prohibitively expensive. A set-up which will do this for everybody is impossible to realise in commercial harmonica manufacture, as different players require different set-ups anyway. Better to learn to do it yourself according to your own needs. I don’t find the new GM any harder to overbend than the previous version.

I just took my new GM apart and have no difficulty in accessing the 5 & 6 hole reeds. 

The old GM had several issues, in particular with airtightness. In my opinion, the redesign addresses these issues pretty effectively. The result sounds great and is both elegant and comfortable to play, I would say it’s an improvement. That said, I’m not a Golden Melody guy and will continue to play Marine Band Crossovers to the day I die.

Steve Baker
www.stevebaker.de
www.harmonica-masters.de