Jared_SA
56 posts
May 27, 2013
8:27 AM
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Hey guys.
I have an old, musty Hohner Blues Harp. It's a nailed version. Would like to know the year basic info.
Thanks
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Last Edited by Jared_SA on May 27, 2013 8:38 AM
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WinslowYerxa
306 posts
May 27, 2013
9:56 AM
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Well, it dates between about 1965 and 1992, when the nailed version was replaced by the MS version.
The nail patterns on the reedplates can help narrow down the dates. I have no expertise in this area, bur several folks do have this knowledge for Marine Band harmonicas. The nailed Blues harp is just a Marine Band with different covers, so the Marine Band dating should work.
By, the way, please don't anybody reply that the Blues Harp had thinner reeds for bending or any of that junk. That was pure advertising hype by Hohner. Quite successful, apparently, as folks are still parroting it 50 years later.
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Winslow
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Stevelegh
758 posts
May 27, 2013
11:48 AM
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The Hohner literature reads as follows:
"World's first blues harmonica. Great new sound. Reeds set higher for greater action and longer life."
Are you saying they lied to us?
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arzajac
1058 posts
May 27, 2013
12:04 PM
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How many nails are there on the draw side in between slots? If there are three, you have a harp that can be restored well. Those were made before Hohner quality dropped in the 80s and 90s.
If there are only two, you should not expect it will ever become a stellar harp.
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MP
2758 posts
May 27, 2013
12:52 PM
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"The Hohner literature reads as follows:
"World's first blues harmonica. Great new sound. Reeds set higher for greater action and longer life."
Are you saying they lied to us? "
i think the answer is Yes.
i'll put Marine Band plates on nailed Blues Harps if they are good Blues Harps; most aren't so i use the reed plates for donor reeds.
according to BBQBob, the bad Hohner years are 81 thru 95. if it came w/ a blue wrap around plastic snap case it may be prior to 81. v. hard to date these harps.
PS. the nailed Blues Harp is the first harp i ever owned. i paid $3.65 or so cuz we pay a bit more for things here in Hawaii. ( just looked at Pat Missins site re-the Blues Harp. The ad says it costs $3. Ah, the good ole days:-)
Bought it in '72 because i wanted to play blues.
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MP
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Last Edited by MP on May 28, 2013 3:56 PM
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timeistight
1236 posts
May 27, 2013
1:16 PM
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"Are you saying they lied to us?"
That depends what you mean by "lie".
Princeton philosophy emeritus Harry G. Frankfurt in his On Bullshit distinguished between lying (e.g., "the cheque is in the mail") which is a deliberate attempt to deceive and marketing speak (a.k.a., bullshit) where the speakers neither know nor care what the truth is. It's like the joke about the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman: the used car salesman knows when he's lying. The Hohner ad writers probably didn't care what kind of reeds were in the blues harp; they just wanted to sell them.
Pat Missin addresses the Blues Harp myths in Does the Hohner Blues Harp have thinner reeds than other harps? where he writes, The reedplates on the older Blues Harp were the same as those used on the Marine Band and to be honest, after servicing a great many of them, I never noticed that they were consistently set any differently than those on the Marine Band.
Last Edited by timeistight on May 27, 2013 1:23 PM
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barbequebob
2278 posts
May 28, 2013
10:09 AM
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If you see the reed plates held down to the comb using 5 nails, that's stock somewhere around 1989-91, and other than that, they are basically the same as when they were first issued in 1965, BUT anything made during their bad years, which was 1981-1995, the slot tolerances began getting noticably wider, making them more leaky, plus they weren't resharpening their cutting blades often enough, leaving tons of saw marks on the combs (another BIG cause of air leaks), and often the covers weren't properly seated on the reed plates.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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nacoran
6823 posts
May 28, 2013
1:36 PM
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Timeistight- And sometimes the truth is somewhere in between. I had a friend who used to be a telemarketer for a cable company. They'd try to sell cable internet packages and they'd they could offer 10,000 kilobytes/s, when really they could only offer 10,000 kilobits/s (a byte is 8 bits). My friend was ethical, and he'd even try to correct his co-workers, but most of them were computer illiterate and couldn't understand the difference. The corporation confused their own techs enough that they couldn't accurately inform their customers.
Watts for amps are another good example.
Am I correct that MS Blues harps all have squared cover plates instead of that wavy line?
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Last Edited by nacoran on May 28, 2013 1:37 PM
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barbequebob
2279 posts
May 29, 2013
9:53 AM
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That's been true of the MS Blues Harps since day one.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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