Blog posts

Question:
"I play ... blues, simple jazz, little country. I play single tone, multitone, chords, arpeggios (triades, 6th; 7th), different modes (or positions). Tongue blocks, splits,
What kind of tuning is optimal for my style of playing?"

Response:
"Hi ---,

Since you play single, multiple, chords and arpeggios but you also play in different positions, the answer is not straightforward. But the problem may not be too big, either...

If you have played both stock Golden Melodies and Stock Marine Band or Special 20s, you have experienced both temperaments. And if you don't have a strong preference at this point, then either temperament should work for you - the question is which do you prefer? How important is it to you? Is this really a big problem?

If we focus on the reeds that are tuned as major thirds, that's the most noticeable difference. So holes 2, 5, 8 blow and 3, 7 draw are tuned about 12 cents flat on Marine Band type harmonicas. When playing in positions/modes/scales where those holes are the tonic or the fifth, I feel like that's where it's the most noticeable. The single note is flat and if that's your tonic, the whole scale may seem unstable. Or for example, the major scale in third position - the second and the sixth note on the bottom octave feel a little off. They would feel better in equal temperament.

But if you tune those notes to be equal, the major triads and even the splits can offer less power, less harmonics. One of the features of a custom harmonica is the precise tuning which provides powerful harmonics if you tune for harmony. The sound from the major triads in harmony can fill the room (as Joe Filisko says, little instrument, big sound!)

I am sorry but you can't have both! Not on the same instrument at the same time, anyway. So the choice is a matter for you to decide. But I hope I have given you the information to make that decision. Please let me know if you need me to elaborate further.

Best,
Z"

I offer two harmonicas that are not listed on my Custom Harmonica page. They are variations of my custom harmonicas.

BASIC CUSTOM
CAD$55 less than my Full Custom

RECONSTRUCTED / NRW harmonica™
Special 20/Rocket CAD$150
Marine Band Deluxe CAD$175

It's a little bit like going to a restaurant and ordering something that's not on the menu.

I try to tailor each instrument to your needs and I keep the Basic custom or NRW options open for specific cases.

I'd rather start the discussion with what a Full Custom can offer and suggest a Basic Custom if the player would not benefit at all from the extra customisation.

I used to feature my Basic Custom harmonicas along with my Full and Overbend custom harmonica as a budget friendly option. It's a great choice for a player who only ever uses second position.

But the truth is, I have found it difficult to start from a Basic custom harmonica and try to meet some extra needs beyond its intended scope.

I usually end up creating a custom harp that's an awful lot like a Full Custom, and that means I have spent the same amount of time and effort customising it as a Full Custom.

I'd love to keep doing things that way, but it's not sustainable.

It's not easy to tell a player who is really set on a Basic custom that I feel they would best be served with a Full Custom because it feels like I'm up-selling.

So my Basic Custom harmonicas are now an off-menu item. They are CAD$55 less than my Full Custom.

The other off-menu item is new: A Reconstructed or NRW harmonica™.

A Reconstructed NRW harmonica™ is not a custom harmonica because it does not feature high-performance reed work.

Whereas a custom harmonica does most of the work for you and is played with little effort, an NRW harmonica™ is played with regular breath force. As such it is the best choice for players who cannot use breath control.

Every player secretly hopes to "win the lottery" and get a "really good one" when they buy a new stock (non-customized) harp from the music store.

A Reconstructed NRW harp™ exceeds that expectation because attention is paid to every detail of its foundation as it is rebuilt. But it does not feature custom reed work (reed shaping). It aims to be powerful, consistent from top to bottom and in perfect tune.

My Reconstructed NRW harmonicas™ are CAD$150 to $175.

See more information about my custom harmonicas here (The Menu)

"Surely, there's one secret thing you do?"

Well, it's not that simple....

When two Hohner Affiliated Customizers talk shop from Andrew Zajac on Vimeo.

When two Hohner Affiliated Customizers talk shop and all you want to do is play a nice harmonica.

Reeds are metal springs. They are made to convert the kinetic energy from the flow of air into decibels by vibrating though the slot of the reed plate.

Springs can last a long time. So can harmonica reeds. But there is no expectation they will last forever. They go out of tune and they break. A reed can be re-tuned without any loss of power or tonal quality many times before it fails.

With good technique, I feel it's reasonable to expect to have to adjust the tuning of your harmonicas every two months or so and you will have to replace between 1-3 broken reeds per year.

You can change harmonica reeds yourself. You will need tools to remove the bad reed and tools and supplies to attach a new reed. It doesn't matter which method you use to attach the new reed to the plate. Use a rivet, use a screw, buy a welding torch and weld it on. Pick the easiest, most accessible method and get good at it (Use a screw!)

To learn how to replace reeds can take practice. You must not only take off the bad reed and put in a new one, but you must not damage or warp the reed plate while you do it. You must also adjust the shape of the new reed so that it plays well. And once you have done that, you need to adjust the tuning of the reed since it will likely be off. Even the slightest change in a reed's placement on the plate will change the pitch.

You can scavenge reeds from other harmonicas of the same make and model to replace broken reeds. You must use a reed of the exact same size from the same slot of another harmonica. You may use a reed that is 1 to 4 semitones higher and tune it down. A really easy way to tune down a reed is to use BLUTAK:

It's more difficult to use a reed of a lower pitch and tune it up. It can be done. Don't try to raise it more than one semitone. Any more than that and you will not like the tone. And it's too much work to be worth the effort.

Hohner Marine Band type reeds use two different slot configurations. Long Slot are used for keys of C and lower. Short slot is used for keys Dd and higher. This can complicate things since the size of a 6 slot in a D harp is different than the size of the 6 slot of a C harmonica.

Still, you have lots of options. See this chart for Hohner MB, GM, Special 20 and Rocket reeds:
Reed Chart Hohner

You can buy new reeds from the Hohner and Seydel factories. There is no such option for Suzuki nor Lee Oskar.

It's straightforward to buy packages of three reeds from the Seydel website.

It's easy to buy packages of five reeds from Hohner from their USA/Canada shop. Go to hohnershop.com

For the rest of the word, you need to use the hohner-cshop.de website. At the time I am writing this, the links to single reeds are broken.

They can be found as you navigate for diatonic harmonica, Marine Band type parts. They offer a product that is quite expensive which includes five pieces of all 20 reeds for a key.

I don't think that's a smart investment. Mostly reeds 4, 5, 7 and maybe 9 blow out the most frequently. You do not need to have five extra reeds for all the other holes.

If you select a key, you will be shown the individual notes and reeds on the bottom of the page. If you click on one of those notes, you should be able to add a pack of five of those individual reeds to the cart. But those links are broken.

I suggest you use the contact page to ask about ordering individual reeds. Specify the key, the hole and whether it's the blow or draw reed you need. If you want to use rivets instead of screws, ask them to supply you with some rivets. They usually can provide them in sticks of 50. They are excellent and you can use them on Seydel harmonicas.

The size of the top four chambers are significantly smaller in a Short Slot Dark comb™ than a Long Slot (standard) comb. This helps you match your embouchure to the resonance required to control the first semitone blow bend on the ten hole.

If you are struggling to hit that note cleanly in a higher key diatonic harmonica, don't be hard on yourself. It may not be your technique. It may just be physics.

The smaller overall space of the slot decreases the amount of compressible air in the system.

More importantly, the depth of the slot can affect what frequency is reinforced by the channel. The reed dimensions and weight distribution determines the frequency obtained when air flows through the slot and past the reed. But the slot itself can want to behave like a pan flute and the column of air can compress and expand at it's favourite frequency.

On the top end of the harp, it's difficult to compensate for that using your own embouchure alone.

The back wall of Short Slot combs' holes 7, 8, 9 and 10 are closer to the opening than those of a long slot comb. This changes the frequency that is reinforced to one that does not compete with that first semitone blow bend.

You can't change the laws of physics but you can change the slot sizes so that physics works in your favour!

See more about my Dark Combs™ here: Dark Combs

See here for more information.

Spiral tuning has the notes of the major scale alternating between the blow and draw notes. It provides draw bends and overblows from holes 1 to 10.

It also provides a lot of chords. You can add a major or minor seventh to many of the
chord triads shown here.

You can alter the tuning of a Standard Richter harmonica to Spiral Tuning.

Here is a visual aid to the modification:

Shown above are the offsets in semitones. You only need to lower the pitches. And you only need to modify 12 of the 20 reeds.

You can use solder. You can also use BluTak which is a very effective and stable way to lower the pitch of a reed by several semitones. It's the easiest method, too!

Second Position Spiral is another alternative where the tonic is the 2 draw.

The chords available are as follows:

Here are the modifications. You need to alter an extra reed:

Hohner has released a new altered tuning diatonic harp called PentaHarp.

In Pat Missin's Altered States list of altered tunings, this tuning is 11.15, "Blues Scale Tuning" which has been known since the 90s.

PentaHarp offers you draw bends from bottom to top. The same breath pattern is repeated and there are no blow bends.

You can order pre-tuned PentaHarps but it's possible to convert a Standard Richter harmonica. The conversion to PentaHarp is a pretty big job. The blow and draw reeds in four holes need to be swapped to avoid having to sharpen notes. It's much more effective to lower the pitch or reeds instead of raising them. The job is much easier and the reed playability will stay protected.

PentaHarp adds three semitones to the total range of the instrument compared to Standard Richter. We will add these extra semitones on the bottom end of the instrument, not the top.

So we will start with a harp that is three semitones sharper than the key we are aiming for and tune it down.

Here is a visual aid to the modification:

Alteration checklist:
1- Swap blow/draw reeds 7, 8, 9 and 10. This will really make things easier.
2- Perform coarse tuning adjustment. Lower pitch using BluTak or Solder.
3- Perform other customizing and improvements
4- Perform fine tuning. No major chords are present but there are lots of opportunities for harmony in splits and octaves. Tune all minor thirds to zero. Tune Fourths and Fifths to be in harmony with the tonic (Fourths are about -2 cents and Fifths are about+2 cents)

The Reed Plate Holder will help you hold the reed plate steady as you straighten it with the Reed Plate Claws. Once you get comfortable with the claws, you may no longer need the Reed Plate Holder.

It has two slots to accommodate many different sizes of reed plates. Use the smallest
slot that fits.

The Reed Plate Holder ships with a sticker on the under side. The adhesive will help hold the plate in place. Once it loses its stickiness, you can peel it off and replace it with any kind of tape you have on hand. If you no longer need the additional help from the adhesive, don't bother replacing it.

You can find them here: Flat Pack.

This design was created to open up the back area of the Hohner Golden Melody. There is less comb material in back of the slots and that shapes the sound differently both acoustically (in air) and cupped in a mic. I feel this provides more power which I attribute to less attenuation or kinetic energy lost.

I will be looking for testers.

What do you think?

"Gapping almost any harp will allow you to play overblows!"

True. But let's be specific about what we mean.

Almost any harp can play an overblow that you "wind up"; it's easy to play the overblow when rolling off the draw note. This isn't as big an achievement as some seem to think it is. Those kinds of overblows are very limited in their application because more often than not, you want to be able to play the overblow on its own as a single note.

A true test of a harp's "overbend-ability" is whether you can play the overblow from a dead stop. Gapping a stock harp tightly will not reliably allow you to play overbends from a dead stop.

The other thing about "just gapping" a harp for overblows is that gapping is a very crude way to adjust reeds. It only takes into consideration the height of the tip of the reed but it's the height along whole length of the reed that is crucial. In essence you need to consider the shape of the reed.

If you don't, sure you can slam down the gaps and crank out an overbend, but very likely, that's made the hole miserable to play. The instrument will only play with light breath, low volume and weak tone.

On the other hand, an Overbend harmonica with proper reed work will offer you full range from quiet to loud, rich tone and the regular notes, bends and overbends, all play with the same effort.

Reed work can increase the available range while making the harp much more responsive. It should be more fun to play an overbend harp, not less.

In my world of harmonica reeds, torsional vibrations is not a thing.

SQUEAL!

Sure, torsional vibrating is a great explanation for what makes a harp squeal when someone is struggling to play overbends or even regular draw and blow bends. Instead of just moving up and down, the reed also wiggles from side to side.

But torsional vibrations is just another word for squealing and squealing happens because the reed doesn't close the slot properly. It's really as simple as that. There isn't a special kind of squealing or a library of specific remedies to address a vast array of different squeals.

Harmonica reeds squeal because they don't close the slot properly.

Reed work (and obligatory Framework) should fix that. Make the slot straight and then make the whole length of the reed pass through the slot all at the same time.

Some harps are more prone to squealing than others. Why is that? It's still because their reeds don't close the slot properly.

Addressing the issue with wax or other foreign substances is not optimal because it changes the timbre and response and lowers the available range. It can add variability to the pitch and the reed tuning will drift.

Will embossing help? No. Not in of itself.

I hope that helps.

Years ago, customizers (or folks who thought of themselves as customizers) would spread falsehoods to confuse and frustrate their competition and to build up their reputation.

Myths long-since debunked are still spreading like they are bits of secret knowledge that someone doesn't want you to know.

Customizing the diatonic harmonica takes skill, patience, high standards and common sense. There are no real shortcuts. Putting in the time and effort needed to make the slots perfect before doing reed work *is* the shortcut.