I just got this pre-WWII Chromonika III off eBay
Hello @stevenlois1,
I don’t know about the others, but I can’t open the link. I’m not logged into Dropbox.
Greetings Astrid
@AstridHandbikebee63
A couple of screenshots. I didn’t have to sign in to Dropbox, I do have an account, but it said ‘Sign up’ rather than sign in, so I don’t know if that mattered or not. These are not all of the pictures, but enough to know what he’s talking about.
It looks very interesting.
Hello @Dave_Dunn,
thank you very much, really nice. The harp has definitely experienced a lot. If only she could express that in music .
That’s right, I’m not registered with Dropbox anymore . Caught !
How do I attach pictures from my phone?
I don’t see the symbol That used to be there to attach them.
@stevenlois1 , this is a screenshot from my phone, note the little ‘picture’ icon at the bottom right of the message box, next to what looks like a computer monitor?
That will allow you to choose pictures, which at first, will look like this.
I’m assuming that you’re using the app though.
Edit- Astrid replied while I was typing, but it seems she has a different layout to mine, so all good!
I was visiting my uncle recently and he whipped out a similar harp @stevenlois1.
Here it is up against my LO to see the size.
Most of the holes work both on the blows and the draws but this is what I found when I opened her up
Not sure if the small plastic covers over the reeds need to be there. The ones without them didn’t seem to be affected. Here’s the other side
It was fun playing around with it a bit, but definitely a different instrument all together!
In my travels I also came across this “Pitch Pipe” by Hohner
So cool to see different harmonicas from years past. The pitch pipe has a slider isolating the notes beside the desired hole.
Hello @HarpinBobbyMcB,
These plastic - or nowadays also teflon - tongues must be there if it is a chromatic harp WITH valves.
There are also chromatic ones without valves.
Are lovely old sweethearts. If they could tell.
Greetings from Astrid
Very cool! Very interesting to see Inside.
My model is the 16 hole.
Those plastic covers are the valves that Astrid @AstridHandbikebee63 mentioned. They are not required but they do improve the playability of the harp (and also can be added to Richter blues harps, but that is another story in itself). They do this by completely closing off the slot where they are located when the other slot is being used so that the air is more efficiently directed to the Unvalved slot/reed rather than being lost and doing nothing.
The drawback to these valves is that they often become “sticky” and/or create noises themselves that are not musical but simply “noise”. There are techniques to avoid these problems but they can still occur. Seydel and P.T. Gazell have developed a new type of valve that is thicker and made of different material. I have purchased them and have no problems (yet !) on any of the harps where I have installed them.
This topic (valves) is rather comlex and I will not go further into it. But adding them (valves) to Richter blues harps in the appropriate manner permit (with practice ) playing your good old 10 hole Richter blues harp completely chromatically without use of the difficult overblows or overdraws!!
Regards,
– Slim
Congrats on a cool acquisition @stevenlois1! (and also on learning how to attach photos in the forum. Thanks @AstridHandbikebee63)
Hmmmmm. Intersting @Slim! Love to hear more about those in a separate post at some point!
Aloha,
Luke