Harmonica Repair

Mar 17 2024

Washed my existing harmonicas. I took one apart and scrubbed the comb and reedplates with a toothbrush. Don't scrub reedplates with a toothbrush, the toothbrush bristles get caught in the reeds and might bend them. Reeds don't seem to accumulate much junk anyhow. Brushing the combs and faceplate is a good idea.

The other harmonics I just ran under water, and brushed the faceplate while it was still all together. The diatonics were pretty easy to shake fairly dry, but the chromatic holds onto a lot of water. Playing it pulled the water into my lungs. Probably a bad idea.

Mar 18 2024

Got a new custom 12-hole Seydel chomatic,

Hole:123456 789101112
Blow:DFADFA DFADFA
Draw:EGBEGB EGBEGB
Blow slide:C#F#BbC#F#Bb C#F#BbC#F#Bb
Draw slide:EbAbCEbAbC EbAbCEbAbC

Minor/Minor Compact Tuning on a Chromatic Harmonica

I ordered a harmonica disinfecting bag in the morning, but it'll take a few days, so I just wiped the faceplate with rubbing alcohol and called it good.

Yes it's my tuning. It's not very airtight: I can draw for 11 seconds, blow for 26, and some notes are hard to get much volume out of. On my old Hohner Special 20 I can draw for 36 and blow for 50, so, yah, not airtight. Bends are possible, kind of, but it takes a lot of wind and sometimes just can't be done. (Later trials did 65 draw, 75 blow on Special 20 but still 11 seconds draw on custom Seydel.)

Trying out various songs, intervals just never sound good. It's always a mistake to play more than one note at a time. There's often the sympathetic ringing of the minor chords even when you don't want them. I tried "Solfeggietto", but it's almost entirely draws, and combined with not being airtight, I can't play more than a few bars without having to stop because my lungs are full of air. It can be played in Am or G#m and both have that problem.

Mar 19 2024

I learned to play ascending semitones, and "George Washington Bridge", and I made a video of it.

Mar 20 2024

I flipped the slider. If I pretend it's a semitone lower, the tuning becomes

Hole:123456 789101112
Blow:CFACFA CFACFA
Draw:DGBDGB DGBDGB
Blow slide:C#EG#C#EG# C#EG#C#EG#
Draw slide:D#F#A#D#F#A# D#F#A#D#F#A#

Major/Major Compact Tuning on a Chromatic Harmonica

This tuning is a bit more tolerable. It's most natural to play it in F (really F#) since the major chord is all blows and the scale requires two shifts. It's got 3 octaves plus extra notes on both ends. Others scales where the major chord is all blows are A and C#. I don't know if needing lots of blows is universal, or just for this harmonica because the draws are so bad. Sometimes I also play it in C, which only requires one slide, but the C E G chord is blow slide-blow draw which is annoying. Having to play one note at a time remains true.

Mar 21 2024

Got a 10-hole chromonica off eBay for $4.99. Also got the disinfecting bag.

I took the 10-hole apart and washed it with a toothbrush again (but didn't brush the reedplates). It had a wooden comb that was broken. I looked up how to fix it, they recommend two-part epoxy, and put all back together to dry except the epoxy is wrapped with a strip of a plastic bag to keep the epoxy from sticking to the reedplate etc. I didn't repair the comb. I washed it on the bathroom floor and had to keep shutting the door to keep Blaze from drinking the washwater and Justine from assigning me work.

I tried the disinfectant bag. It has a light that turns on, but otherwise I didn't smell anything and couldn't tell if it did anything. I used it to disinfect the Seydel too.

The new harmonica, after disinfecting it I tried playing it, and it reeks of cigarette smoke. There's no way to get that out of the comb. Probably the reedplates can be reused, but not the comb. If I repair the comb it'll just be for the practice of trying to repair one. I didn't wash the comb because it's this fragile wooden thing probably glued together. I can't play it because I don't want to be breathing in cigarette smoke.

The reedplates were nailed to the wood with these tiny nails. I pried one reedplate off, and I think I bent the reedplate in the process. When I put it back together the nails kept coming up. The big screws that hold the shell on hold the reedplates on too, so maybe I didn't ruin it by bending the reedplate and loosening the nails. Most of the reeds had windsavers on them, though two had come off.

It may be that rearranging old chrominicas won't work because they're all old and everyone smoked back then. Or perhaps I have to learn to 3d-print plastic combs. I probably have to learn to do that anyhow.

Mar 22 2024

I got another Hohner Chromonica 260, this one in C with a button slider. (The one yesterday was in G and had the slider itself bent like a little crowbar so it could be pressed.) Both today's and yesterday's have 1937 as the most recent date stamped on their cover, so they're from sometime after that. This one also smells of cigarettes or something, but not nearly as strong, and the comb's not broken. Or at least not much. I can actually play this one.

The tuning isn't what I expected: both with and without the slider is normal Richter tuning. 10-hole, what did I expect? It's fairly airtight and can do all the normal bends and overblows reasonably well, not as good as my Special-20, but pretty good. There are a few dead notes without the slider, but with the slider all notes are functioning.

I don't like shifting up, so I flipped the slider to Irish, now the default is what was previously slide-in. All notes function, and the slider gives you a low B, and also a high B. (OK, low C and high C, and it's now a C# harmonica.) I also like doing bends and maybe overblows, so I got tweezers and pulled out all the paper valves. If it hurt the airtightness, it wasn't by much, and now it doesn't buzz and cut off when I try to do bends.

I can play everything I can on a diatonic and then some because I've got that low B plus all the chromatic notes. Like, "Summertime", I can do the starting B as a draw, or as a slide-blow. I can do the low B (that's a slide C). The Bb-B-Bb-B-A riff, I can do the Bb by bend or by slider, and I can even do the A as a 2-semitone bend of B or a 1-semitone bend of Bb. I can do the low E as a low E, or as a slide bent F. I can play "The Entertainer" like I can on a chromatic. Everything diatonic is easy, plus a little. I see Hohner no longer makes these. Boo, this design was a winner.

All the sites on the internet say it's impossible to get the smoke out of the pearwood, and it falls apart if you take off the reedplates, which I plan to do repeatedly. I should get plastic replacement combs. Brendan Powers sells them for 12 pounds (unsanded). If I keep going, I'll be designing my own combs, because existing combs aren't designed for my tunings. And shortly after that I'll have my own comb design tweaks to experiment with.

March 24 2024

Recorded the Richter-tuned Chromonica 260 (Chromonika I) on YouTube.

April 7 2024

Recorded Weber's Hungarian Rondo, and successfully included the Bb overblow musically..

April 13 2024

Ugh, another specialized technique I have to learn in order to be qualified to judge harmonica designs. Tongue-blocked bends. Recorded trying to learn tongue-blocked bends. I'm probably doing it wrong. They say the air should go over your tongue like normal, but I have the air going underneath or around the side of the tongue mostly. I definitely need the harmonica much deeper in my mouth than when I'm doing pucker bends. I first got tongue-blocked bends to work by using the underside of my tongue.

April 20 2024

Comparative overblows on several Hohner Special 20s, a Chromonika. My Seydel is half-valved so it can't do them. It does vary by instrument how easy, what it sounds like, and somewhat what mouth shape to use. I've been doing a lot of practice overblows on holes 4 5 6, probably pretty annoying to listen to. Hole 6 is getting close to dependable, but hole 4 and 5 are only if I'm lucky or I've been experimenting for a few seconds. 4 and 5 almost always have a delay filled with the normal blow first.

April 25 2024

Ordered a Suzuki Overdrive and a Lee Oscar (and a reed replacement wrench). I should know what's out there.

April 27 2024

Recorded "Ubi Caritas". In F. It doesn't sound good because it's all deep bends, but it's good bend practice trying to get it to sound good anyhow.

April 28 2024

Recorded "Get Back" by the Beatles and "John B Sloop". Songs that don't require any great skill but sound good anyhow. I got Blaze in the background.

April 29 2024

Discovered the Suzuki Overdrive can hit the B below low C if you cover the draw hole. In fact it can get down to an A or G or something, sounds like a deflating balloon. Did a recording of that. Looked up half-valved bends, which I'd seen mentioned, and yep it's public knowledge that you can bend the lower note lower if the upper note is valved. But it was non-public enough that I had to rediscover it on my own then search for it, rather than just learn it from reading. Tomorrow I'll check if I can get Eb that way.

April 30 2024

Yep, I can get Eb and F# that way. Recorded a full chromatic scale on a Suzuki Overdrive by blocking the appropriate holes with fingers, and ordered gaskets to half-valve a Special 20. The Suzuki is too awkward to use in practice, but it's a good tool for answering "what happens if you block this reed?". The Chromonika I is half-valved, and yes, I can bend its lower note down to a B too, and get Eb and F#, though it's not very airtight.

May 4 2024

Ordered a nonslider from Seydel. The mouthpiece would fit on my existing custom Sampler, and likely would fix the airtightness issue. Ordering just the mouthpiece would be almost as expensive as a whole harmonica and would take months instead of days, so I just ordered a whole harmonica off eBay from Harmonicaland.

May 5 2024

Ordered a 3d printer. You can 3d print combs to replace the smoke-filled pearwood combs of old Chromonica 260s and get a functioning chromatic for near $30 that way. What's more, if you print a nonslider mouthpiece and the comb together as a single piece, it should be more airtight than any chromatic on the market (including the Seydel Nonslider, which has the gap between the mouthpiece and the comb). There are patents on harmonicas with two rows of holes to blow into going back to 1898, so the nonslider design in general isn't really new.

May 7 2024

Recorded "Happy Birthday To You" and "Take me Out to the Ballgame". Happy Birthday should be popular, people have to sing it all the time, so I played it at the right speed and with expression so it could accompany people singing. "Ballgame", I just hit the right notes, no ornamentation, which is more than any other recording of that song on harmonica, but I'm still displeased with it because it's not really music. It's like picking out the right notes with one finger on the piano.

Updated my future/harmonica.html to include half-valved bends. That changes the calculus significantly. Richter, and spiral tuning on a diatonic, are fully chromatic if you include half-valved bends.

May 8 2024

I realized I could half-valve a Special 20 by duct-taping on valves that I'd taken off Chromonicas. That meant I didn't have to wait for Brendon Power's gaskets to show up. I tried it, and, yes, it works, I can bend all the blows down at least half a step. I couldn't get the top register to bend properly. Phoebe came home from college.

May 9 2024

Recorded how half-valving gives you all these extra bends, explained what half-valving was, compared the sound of the half-valved hole 7 Bb to the hole 6 overblow Bb. Said half-valving really should be the default for harmonicas.

May 10 2024

Recorded a full chromatic scale on a half-valved harmonica. Also recorded "I'm in love with a big blue frog", which needs the hole 5 Eb half-valved bend.

Discussion with someone on reddit about half-valving. They wanted simple rules for improvisation: half-valving makes all notes easily accessible, half-valving means all notes bend, they wanted the top register and the middle register tuned the same so they could repeat patterns, they wanted all normal bends on draw so they didn't have to think about it, they wanted only whole-note intervals between high and low in the upper register so any bends had only one note they could hit, and they wanted a Bb in the top register.

May 11 2024

Got the 3D printer. Opened the box. Read the instructions. Realized that my custom harmonica is half-valved, and yes, it does half-valved bends quite well. Many scales I can play the whole scale with no slider by a combination of normal bends and half-valved bends.

Fiddled with half-valving of top register. Whether the valve is aligned with the reed or backwards, or bigger than the hole or ends at the same point as the hole or leaves a 1/8th inch gap, none of that seems to matter at all. Bigger gaps seem to help half-valved bends, but they might make normal bends harder. Technique seems the biggest factor for both normal bends and half-valved bends: I need a tiny space with the tongue almost touching the holes. The shape for normal bends and half-valved bend seems to be the same, at least for hole 8.

May 12 2024

Assembled the 3D printer but feel I need to learn more before I attempt to print anything.

May 13 2024

Got another Seydel: a nonslider, which is a DeLuxe Steel with a funny mouthpiece. I swapped the mouthpieces on the DeLuxe with the custom Sampler, and now the custom Sampler is airtight, and the slider works correctly on the DeLuxe (I can tighten the screws all the way down and still use the slider). The DeLuxe was entirely nonvalved, but my custom Sampler is half-valved, so it can do both normal bends and half-valved bends. With the funny mouthpiece making it airtight, the Sampler might now be a promising instrument. I'm not sure what the best technique is for playing it, pucker or tongue-blocked or something else.

May 14 2024

Half-valving makes the obvious augmented chromatic tuning fully chromatic per mode. This has every hole advance by four semitones, with draw two semitones above blow, and slide a semitone below nonslide. Draws bend down a semitone (it's not multiple levels of bend so it's easy to hit the right note). Blows bend down a semitone (meaning every tone bends down a semitone, very simple rule). Every scale has do-re-mi in one mode and fa-sol-la-ti in the other mode. Every scale has do-re-mi alternate blow-draw-blow (or vice versa) and every scale has fa-sol-la-ti alternate draw-blow-draw-blow (or vice versa). This makes for an extremely simple tuning to work with, which is good for improvisation.