While practicing the scale, i find my 6 draw dont make a sound? Not every time thou. I dont feel out of breath when this occurs? I try to maintain a low breath so not to “squeak” the higher notes. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Eric
It might be your Embrochre it’s quite commercial n drop your jaw a bit more try and relax
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Take a look at the reed alignment and also how your 6 reed is gapped relative to reeds that play well. If its to much saliva all the reeds show show the effect. Try keeping your head up just a bit and this will stop saliva accumulation. If your 7 and 5 draw notes are fine I would make sure the 6 is gapped tight enough to play easily. If it is gapped too tight open the gap as this can cause a reed not to sound. I use only plastic combs and dip my harps in alcohol to keep and thing that could get under a reed out and it takes about 20 seconds. I live in a dry climate and the humidity is often 30% or less so my harp is dry by the time I get back in the noise room and my harps void of moisture.
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I don’t know what the hell That was supposed to say damned spell check. Just drop your jaw a little more try and relax tilt your head right back occasionally to let the saliva run out. Don’t hunch over the harp too much as again it can cause you to tense up ( occasionally guilty of this myself)
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I need to learn how to do gap adjustments, and the internal workings before I destroy my harp. anyone have any good reference material on this?
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YouTube there are some good guys on there who can show you what to do. Please practice on an old cheap harp first or you will ruin your harp if you aren’t careful
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Andy, its funny you said that. I have a “east top” i used this for 1st module. Had a very hard time with single notes. Went to the sp 20 and night and day difference!. So bend it better… could not get a single bend to work. Tried it on the east top no luck. But after 8 hours with it i switched back to the sp 20 and boom !!! Crazy… i think i will do all my practice with an inferior harp. Seems to be a jedi mind trick of sorts… Eric
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Yeah for some reason certain East Tops have tight high notes it’s a bugger to play em, I generally gap them, I gap all of my harps anyway even my SP20’s but I did buy and East Top that arrived perfectly out of the box about two weeks ago. I didn’t have to touch it at all which absolutely blew me away I compared it to my SP 20 in the same key It was spot on and I’d gapped the SP 20 already. I couldn’t believe it!
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Andy i apologize, i have an “east rock” amazon harp. Not very good at all. (My opnion) sorry i misspoke.
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Each to their own, they are at the moment very hit and miss, but they will take the market from the Germans one day, some of the more expensive Chinese models are getting the thumbs up from a lot of experienced well known players. Such as the Kong Sheng JDR, and more recently Dabells Tod Parrot liked em so much he bought 3. Ok these instruments are around the same price as and SP20 or upwards of a crossover but there are a lot of people living them. Unlike Hohner their spares are cheaper and they seem to want to please their customers. Dabells are South Korean by the way. And they tune them so they are “True” basically spot on. I myself am getting fed up of Hohner no real customer service, they care very little about their customers unless they are prestige customers, they are too expensive, the new progressive range is pretty much a flop ( I’ve compared the new “Progressive” SP 20’s to my old ones and there is a marked difference in performance in my opinion they new ones don’t seem as loud for one. And they really don’t seem to have improved the models air tightness and I think the reed plates are made cheaper
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Great info to keep in mind as i continue to learn! Thanks bud! Eric
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U Tube has some good post. Zajak has a good one.
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