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Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 09:12:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: Winslow Yerxa
Subject: re: 2 questions (Golden Melody superstition)

PL500 writes:

>2. Yes, Golden Melodies do overblow and bend better
>due to the curved design . Howard Levy swears by
>Golden Melodies for this reason. But i think it has
>more to do with the reed gapping than just the Golden
>Melody.

Oh dear. You sound like you're reading from a Hohner
brochure, and believing what you read. That curved
design stuff is pure nonsense.

By the way, Howard Levy stopped playing Golden Melody
instruments several years ago (1993?). He plays mostly
Filisko modified Marine Bands nowadays. The Hohner
endorser agreement allows them to use the artist's
image any way they want for as long as they want, so
his mug is still plastered over pictures of the GM and
probably will be until the next ice age.

Red-box Golden Melody harps (the current version) are
no easier to overblow than other harmonicas - I've had
several that were much harder to overblow than stock
Marine Bands.

The older white-box Golden Melody harps have the
reputation of being easier to overblow. Like anything
no longer made and once played by a worshipped player,
they have achieved Holy Grail status among devotees. I
managed to find a couple gathering dust in a guitar
store, and they were better for overblowing (but only
on Holes 4-5-6) than the current red-box version, but
still far from exemplary.

When Howard started out, nobody was customizing
diatonics (that anybody knew about), overblowing was
poorly understood (in fact mostly unheard-of), and the
only airtight diatonics widely available were the
Special 20 and the Golden Melody. Howard chose the
latter, and ever since, they have been the sine qua
non to those who kiss the footsteps of the Man from
Skokie (actually that's outdated, too. I believe he
lives in Evanston nowadays).

OK, so what makes a harp good for overblowing?

- - Airtightness (see the archives)

- - Optimized reed gapping (see the archives)

- - Reed design. Hohner reeds in general seem to be
better disposed for a wider range of reed behaviors
than the reeds used in some Asian diatonics, which
seem to be optimized for excellent response in a
narrow range of pitches, but resist being pushed
outside those boundaries.

Devotees of Huang and Lee Oskar harps praise their
quick response, easy activation, bright tone and easy
bending. That's the optimization. But isolate the reed
and try extreme behavior - overbending or extended
closing reed bends - and they quickly become
unresponsive or hard to control. Hohner reeds, by
contrast, often require more effort to play, but will
respond to a wider range of pitch bending. (Any
acousticians out there - is this an example of what
they call damping?)

The reeds in Goldem Melody harps are the same as those
in the other Hohner "handmades" - Special 20 and
Marine Band (along with the older, pre-MS handmade
MesiterKlasse and Blues Harp). The MS (Modular Series)
models - Big River, MS-Blues Harp, MS-Cross Harp,
MS-Meisterklasse - also overblow well (at least the
re-designed post-1995 versions).

Winslow Yerxa

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