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My store is not taking any orders today due to health reasons which limit to my productivity.
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My custom harmonicas, combs and tools are made to order. If items are out of stock on my website, it's likely due to my workload is at the limit. Please see my dealers for all items I offer.
Maximum production times may be up to 16 business days for combs and tools. Current production time for custom harmonicas are shown on the top of the custom page.
Thanks for your support.
Andrew
Have you every tried to give a reed a little more snap but nothing seemed to work? It plays "fine" (adequately) but everything you do to improve tone and response has no effect?
"What am I doing wrong?" you ask yourself.
If your harp is airtight and the reed has a decent shape, you should see results. If that's not the case, you have fallen victim to a subtle defect.
There are a few subtle defects that can cause you grief. The best way to deal with them is to learn how to spot them and correct them before they can affect your work.
Base centering is one of these subtle defects. The worst thing about this one is that the reed shows no clue there is anything wrong until you try to work on it: It plays adequately out of the box.
Once you master this technique, you can center the base of a reed in about 90 seconds.
Difficulty level: Advanced. Practice on an entire reed plate of a proper (scrap) harp. Shift the base of every reed in different directions to learn how to control where the base ends up when you are done.
In this video I am using my Reed Replacement kit and a Grobet Tuning File
Often, shifting it to one side will affect the reed curvature. Once the reed's base is centered, it's important to check and correct the reed shape. It's important to check and correct the reed base centering before you start to customize a harp to avoid undoing your hard-earned progress.