florida-trader
1569 posts
Jun 15, 2022
12:27 PM
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As many of you know, one of our fellow harmonica enthusiasts, John Potts, (aka hvyj) passed away on February 26th. I never met John in person, but we exchanged voluminous emails and spoke on the phone many times. He was very strong supporter of Blue Moon Harmonicas, and we did business for many years. At first, he just purchased aluminum combs from me. He loved my anodized aluminum combs and installed them on many of his sets of harmonicas. As my reed-smithing skills increased, John commissioned me to build several sets of harps for him – some of which had non-standard tunings. For example, he had me tune a set of Suzuki Olives to A=432 Hz. He had me tune a couple sets of harps to what he referred to as “Mad Cat Tuning” a recipe apparently created by Peter “Mad Cat” Ruth. He had me build two sets of hybrid harmonicas using Golden Melody covers. One was a combination of Suzuki Manji Reed Plates and Golden Melody Covers. My machinist was able to create a custom comb for this project which married the Golden Melody comb with the reed plate holes for the Manji. This was fairly easy as the spacing on the Suzuki reed plates and Hohner reed plates is identical. The other set of hybrid harps was a combination of the Golden Melody and Seydel 1847 reed plates. Again, my machinist was able to accommodate us but the spacing on the Seydels is different than on Hohners, so it was a bit more involved.
Upon learning of John’s passing, I expressed my condolences on John’s Facebook page and elaborated a bit about our relationship. Shortly thereafter, his brother reached out to me asking for some help figuring out what to do with all John’s harmonicas. He sent me some photos, but I really could not tell much via the photos, and I told John’s brother that the only way I could assess the harps was to inspect them in person. He sent two big boxes that contained more than 250 harmonicas, most of them organized into nice sets with nice carrying cases. I looked through them all and created a report that provided basic information and my estimate of what they might be worth on the open market. Upon receiving my report, John’s brother asked me if I would be willing to help sell them. Even though I am super busy, I agreed to help. I am presenting all of John’s harmonicas AS-IS. I have an assistant who is disassembling and cleaning each set of harmonicas as we go. So far so good. All the harps have good solid reed plates. They may be in need of some tuning and adjustment, but none of them so far are in need of repair. A lot of the guys who hang out here on Modern Blues Harmonica are skilled in working on harps so it would seem that some of you would be ideal customers for some of these sets. I have priced them to sell. In the event that someone has an interest in one or more of the sets but would also like to have them customized to one degree or another, I would be happy to have that conversation. But for now, just assume that the harps listed are in good working order but probably could stand some TLC. I have listed three of the sets on eBay and there are more to follow. In one of my last conversations with John, he mentioned that some of his harmonicas had been stolen and we talked about making some replacements for what he lost. We never go that far. But this would explain why I did not find some of the sets of harps I was expecting to find in the boxes that his brother sent me. Here are links to the three eBay listings I created today.
Suzuki ProMasters – Set of 10 – Blue Moon Anodized Aluminum Combs
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195139752239
Suzuki Olives – Set of 10 – Blue Moon Anodized Aluminum Combs – Tuned to A=432 Hz
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195139738539
Hohner Meisterklasse – Set of 10 – Blue Moon Anodized Aluminum Combs
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195139772959
Please let me know if you have any interest or questions.
Last Edited by florida-trader on Jun 15, 2022 12:30 PM
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