Re: Customised harps



- ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Douglas Tate" <douglas.tate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Harp-L" <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 3:41 AM
Subject: Re: Customised harps


>
> I am not a customizer, ILUS makes a harmonica from the roots up...
> therefore I can speak a little without bias.
>
> If you find a good customizer then the harmonica you get will indeed be a
> revelation.
> People talk about the fact that the harmonica will be even over it's
entire
> range, that it will be set up the way you want it, it will be able to
bend,
> bow, howl or anything you have asked the customizer to do.
>
> All this is true.
>
> However there is a little extra.
>
> Because the instrument is so even you find that you don't have to play so
> hard to achieve the same result.
>
> Why?  With an uneven stock instrument (and they aren't all uneven) you
tend
> to compensate for poor notes by blowing harder on all of them to make
> certain they work!.
>
> As you get to know your custom harmonica you find that a relaxation takes
> place. This has the effect of not straining the reeds so much and players
> almost invariably report greater life length for the harmonica.
> This can be a big consideration and some players will tell you that they
> haven't had to change their harmonica since having it customized.
>
> This can be a big consideration when equating the cost!  Unfortunately it
> is layout ahead of the benefit.   Just depends on where your priorities
lay.
>
> Douglas t

Hi,
Doug spells out exaactly why a custom harp is much different than a stock
harp is. If you're a pro playing a minimum of 4-10 nights per month, (just
playing at your local blues jam DON'T count as a gig) or if you got enough
bread for it and don't gig that much, then the expense is a worthwhile long
term investment, as a custom harp will be more like a guitar in a sense,
that it will be a lifetime instrument, and rather than uying a whole new
harp when a reed dies (this does NOT mean when it goes out of tune, and can
be retuned and back in business) they can simply replace the indiuvidual
offending reed, and then you're back in business, and the higher upfront
cost will wind up, as far as I'm concerned, much cheaper in the long run.

Custom instruments will make everything you play easier to do so, BUT if you
wind up blowing these harps out as quick as a stock harp, the problem is NOT
the harp, but the person who plays it and it usually translates to playing
WAY WAY WAY WAY too hard 24/7/365 and/or very poor technique, especially the
breathing technique employed by the harp player.

Players bitch and moan about harp quality, how fast they blow them out,
etc., but the bottom line is that for any stock harp to be as good as a
custom harp is, with all the intensive labor that goes with one of those,
how many players are willing to buy a Marine Band, as an example, whose
stock list price is $25 as it is now, but with all the production line
"defects" and everything else straightened out, wind up paying closer to $80
a pop? What too many people want is a Rolls Royce at the price of a hoola
hoop, and let's face it, that's a seriously delusional expectation.

Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA





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