apskarp
17 posts
Jul 27, 2009
5:11 AM
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Hello,
After watching some video from Jason Ricci I was inspired to try to customize my harps and see if there will be any noticable improvements in playing.
So what I did was the embossing + regapping&arching. I first did it to my Special 20 in the kay of C (accidentally, I thought it was my old Lee Oskar ;). It worked pretty well. I used the ball end of my tuner to emboss and I think it had some effect.
Then I did the same thing for that Lee Oskar in the key of A and there occured problems. I used also socket there and more force to get the gaps even smaller. So because of this it started to have some squeeking sounds - I searched the forum and found out it was propably because of some misalignments or too much embossing etc. So I used a wile and got the reed plinking again.
Unfortunately it seemed that after putting the harp together there was another sqeeking reeds in the blow 1&2. I disassembled the harp again and then tryied to plink and adjust the reeds not to sqeek again. Then I noticed that actually they will start to squeek on ly after reedplates are tighten BUT if I also tighten the coverplates they will stop the squeek - apparently it balances some twist caused by the reedplate screws. Unfortunately then some other reed started to squeek. That I could solve by losening the coverplate screws a bit...
Anyway, it's no wonder that the manufacturers can't make very precise adjustments to the reeds when the harp will become so sensitive to all of these tiny things. It has been quite a job to make the Lee Oskar to sound right again, but on the other hand I have learned a few things about embossing (+regapping which I have done before). Very sensitive stuff.
The result is that the harp does feel more responsive and also louder. Especially the 4 draw. Perhaps I managed to do better job there or then it is because I didn't arch that as I did with the 2&3 draw.
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apskarp
20 posts
Jul 29, 2009
2:44 AM
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Some update on this. Firstly, I continued to practise with some cheap C harp that costed 5euros. It was good to be able to do that in a relaxed manner where it isn't very important if you ruin something, but the thing is that the brass is lot different in that cheap harp -it's harder and thus you must use more force to get it embossed. (And the gaps are also bigger.) I think that there was some improvement on the playing, but it's still not very good instrument - and there was still some "ringing sounds" left when I put it on again which I didn't bother to fix.
I have a cheap Lee Oskar toolkit and what I learned was that actually the best tool in that set is the "dentist's tool" which has a little hook on the other and and the other end is filed flat. As it is made of brass the flat end makes a good file to get the burrs of. I mean you don't have to use it as carefully as you would with the actual file - and it is also quite slim and so fits on the slots. It is also a good plinker.
About the Lee Oskar harp in A. What I discovered while playing with the band yesterday was that actually when bending holes 1&2 there was sometimes little ringing sounds which I heard. I studied it more today and found out that 2 draw had that sound somewhere between the semitone bend and whole step bend. And the 1 draw had it also somewhere before the whole semitone bend. So what I did was some filing to the slots where it seemed to be pretty close to the reed and that fixed it.
Another interesting thing that I found out was that actually while you bend the draw notes, after semitone bend actually the blow reed starts to participate the sound producing. So that means that embossing the blow reeds especially for 2 and 3 hole is very important for the bending. Here's some interesting info on that: http://www.angelfire.com/tx/myquill/ -> "How harmonica works"
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apskarp
21 posts
Jul 29, 2009
3:16 AM
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Actually I got it little bit wrong:
Actually the blow reed participates the draw bend from the beginning, but gradually the role of the blow reed increases so that in the end it is almost totally the blow reed that produces the sound. So actually it is important to emboss all the blow reeds on the wholes where you use bending (and vice versa for the blow bends). And it also seems that both reeds are vibrating during the low draw notes also, so actually the reeds seem to be deeply interdependent - as are we all.. ;)
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Bluzdude46
96 posts
Jul 29, 2009
5:49 AM
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Aps, I read somewhere that Lee Oskar reeds and plates were the unfriendliest to work with. Don't remember where I read it, or why, perhaps the thickness or the metallurgy. But I seem to remember it being a "known" thing that Lee Oskar reeds went out of tune or broke with little provocation.
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