Frankie
47 posts
Feb 07, 2018
10:49 AM
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My first harmonica from Seydel was Blues session and I am a little unhappy because I need to blow harder than my marine band , special 20 , Manji and other harmonicas.
Are most Seydel harmonicas set up this way? or I got a cheap one?
Is there any thing I can do about it to make it as smooth as at least special 20?
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SuperBee
5243 posts
Feb 07, 2018
11:58 AM
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Maybe.
Blues session, so that’s a brass reed harp.
I have 5 on my bench right now which I’ve just repaired and tuned.
I’m not really a fan of Seydel brass reeds but they can be set up to play well.
The principle is the same for any harp.
Have you found Andrew Zajac’s free videos yet?
Gaps are the first thing to check. You can often get a big improvement by setting the gaps appropriately
But gaps aren’t always the problem and especially with Seydel I’ve seen some very bad reed shapes/action which gapping will not fix.
you don’t want the belly of your reed anywhere along it’s length to go into the slot before the tip
You also don’t want the tip of the reed to dive into the slot ahead of the rest of the reed.
That’s the problem you need to solve. I don’t mean you specifically but that is the essence of reed shaping.
It’s much easier to damage a reed trying to reshape it than simply resetting the gap, so generally the advice would be practice on scrap.
I didn’t do a lot of that, but I also have paid for it at times.
There is video available and I’d advise watching it.
You need to be able to see what is going on with the reed. And then apply pressure in a focused and controlled way to change it if need be.
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