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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Fixing blown reeds
Fixing blown reeds
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wheezer
11 posts
Jul 06, 2008
4:47 AM
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Hi, it's the tight sod again. Having blown out 3 harps in the last couple of weeks (one being my favorite A harp, a Bushman Souls Voice) I decided that I must get off my backside and start looking to do my own repairs. For the last few years i have not thrown out any old harps or reedplates but put them in the "clunker" box. This gives me a good supply of spare reeds.
I have tried riveting in new reeds without much success, I
always seem to distort the heel of the reed no matter how careful I am. To this end I have bought 10 & 12BA taps, screws and washers with the intention of screwing the new reed in place. I mentioned this to Dave Payne of Elk River Harmonicas, find him on Youtube or at elkriverharmonicas.com, via email while discussing another matter and he seemed to think that the screws would work o.k. but that he would put a nut on the screw instead of tapping a thread into the reedplate. No problem I can try both ways.
Hopefully, during the next week I will do my first repair using this method and I will post how it works out
As a footnote, to check the tuning of the reed I use a keyboard or the tuner in a Behringer V amp module
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eharp
56 posts
Jul 06, 2008
5:23 AM
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i think it is great that you have the desire to start working on your harps. from there you can get into gapping and tuning. soon, you will become a customizer!
but maybe you should look at the cause of blowing out 3 harps in so short of time. are there any similarities in the harps? which reed, age, style you were playing in. it could be you are doing something to aggravate the problem or there may be something you could do to eliminate this situation. then, again, you could just be in a bad stretch.
btw, you can buy just the draw plates for the soul's voice, i think. only $15 bucks, or so. might be the way to go on that one as it is your favorite. compare that to the time you will be spending on learning a new skill and the chance of ruining another reed on the same harp.
good luck.
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wheezer
12 posts
Jul 06, 2008
6:11 AM
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Thanks for that. Problem is new reed plates cost twice as much here in the U.K. as in your part of the world. Of the three harps that blew out two were ones I'd had for quite a while, one blew two draw, one it was three draw and on the Bushman the 5 draw. Just bad luck that they all blew at round about the same time. I do tend to pull quite heavily on the draw bends, I
don't think that I've ever had to change a blow reed though.
I'll see how the rebuilds go and then post.
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oldwailer
113 posts
Jul 07, 2008
8:32 PM
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I've had that problem with a Bushman--4 blow hole--a b-flat harp--I have a few other Bushman's that you couldn't kill with a stick--so I still like them a lot.
There is a guy who sells the Bushman reed plate sets on ebay for about $15--don't know about the shipping to UK--but they are usually there on a buy-it-now basis.
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