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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Harps from way back
Harps from way back
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mankycodpiece
38 posts
Dec 22, 2009
7:31 AM
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i was listening to some sonny terry brownie magee music this morning.one of the tracks was harmonica breakdown.at one point,sonny pulls out the 3 bends clean as a whistle from what i thought was a 2 draw,which had me thinking about harps from way back.
i think the manufacture of harps must have improved a lot since those days,and from what i've heard and read,the marine band,can sometimes leak air a great deal.todays MBs must be better than the one's those guys played.
it's taken a while,but i'm getting to the question.
would those old guys have done some kind of work on their harps?
did they have people that did some kind of customizing,or,even do their own.
excuse me if this is an old question.i have looked through the archives but couldn't find anything on this.
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toddlgreene
283 posts
Dec 22, 2009
7:43 AM
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boy, did you open a can of worms! I think the opposite is true. Older is better.
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~Todd L. Greene, Devout Pedestrian
"listen to what you like for inspiration, but find your own voice"
crescentcityharmonicaclub@gmail.com
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barbequebob
243 posts
Dec 22, 2009
8:41 AM
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I have several pre-WWII as proof that those old ones were WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY better. Customizing on chromatics have been around for decades, but the first customized diatonic was first introduced at the 1991 SPAH convention by Joe Filisko, and his main reason to customize it was to restore the MB to it's original pre-WWII glory. Much of the tweaking info was largely a well kept secret and the first harp tweaking info thbat I can recall seeing published was in 1975 when chromatic player Alan "Blackie" Shackner put out a book entitled "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Marine Band And Blues Harp But Didn't Know Who To Ask" back in 1975, and that help me out a lot. It was a ground breaker, but by comparison to the info that's been published and/or on the interent, it's now pretty primitve by comparison.
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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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mankycodpiece
39 posts
Dec 22, 2009
9:35 AM
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i stand corrected lads.i would have thought with todays technology,Computer Nemerical Control stuff thats around,wouldn't it be logical to think otherwise.
So,could those guys just play the harp straight out of the box to the standard sonny terry played,were the harps that good,or did they need some tweaking to get them right on the money.
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jonsparrow
1459 posts
Dec 22, 2009
10:00 AM
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i own 5 prewar marine bands an they are so much better then modern ones.
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nacoran
585 posts
Dec 22, 2009
10:41 AM
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It's the lead in the bell brass!
It probably had a lot to do with quality control. High quality manual labor used to be relatively cheap.
Also, peoples' taste in sound changes. I read somewhere that Hohner started closing up the back of harmonicas because people wanted a warmer sound. Then people started wanting more projection, so they started opening them up again. Hohner also swallowed up a lot of other companies. I imagine a lot of them were mediocre cheap harps. To keep the people who buy cheap harps happy you have to sell cheap harps, but now they are part of your brand and affect your reputation. They respond to changing tastes and requirements. (In the car world, look what happened to the poor Chevy Nova in the 80's.) And of course at some point in the history of any brand a manager will decide to cut costs and coast on their reputation.
I also imagine a lot of the defective harmonicas just got tossed out.
And new technology is expensive. I wondered myself why, for instance, no one is using laser cut titanium for the reeds. It seems like a perfect choice. It flexes well without worrying. It's highly corrosion resistant. It's lightweight (and if it's two lightweight you could always alloy it into memory metals-that's some really cool stuff) I know titanium is fairly expensive to start with, but it turns out that it's melting point and burning point are really close, so if you want to laser cut it you have to keep it in a non-flammable atmosphere.
Computer lithography, memory metals, carbon composites, each one could cost a small fortune to experiment with, and what if it turns out it sounds terrible, and if it does sound good you still have to retrofit your factory.
I'm really tired so I'm just going to ramble some crazy ideas right now about cool harmonica ideas-
Imagine a clear covered harmonica where the reed plates and each individual reed had laser scroll work on it, maybe with a layer of transparent aluminum (yes it's real) over it to keep the etchings from getting gummed up. Maybe you could have a small magnetic chip at the end of each reed and sensors to measure their movement. How about a transparent comb with fine black wire spiderwebs all through it? How about little servos at the base of each reed where it's anchored. They could adjust the length of the reed by sliding it up and down in the slot, maybe even adjusting it's torque, all hooked to a auto tuner. You could adjust your harp on the fly...
Ok, I'm going to stop now because I actually have some ideas that aren't as crazy or expensive that I don't want to throw out while I can barely form sentences.
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rbeetsme
88 posts
Dec 22, 2009
10:45 AM
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I'm not sure as a general rule you can say older is better, there has been a lot of innovation in the last 5 years. It will be interesting to see what Brad Harrison has built in the B Radical.
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