Re: [Harp-L] Cutting reeds and tuning

[Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 12, 2005, at 5:56 PM, RUSSEGR9@xxxxxx wrote:

> Smo-joe and anyone else,
> You mentioned that you used to sharp your 5 draw reeds back in 59.
> How did you check the tuning? By ear with the other reeds?
> I am going to try it with an old harp or two and am interested in the 
> low
> tech way to check the tuning of the reed.
> thanks
> russ
> _
 Sure, by ear. I was just a kid (16). What happened was that I broke a 
reed off at the rivet pad. I used a slightly larger reed but when I 
snipped it down to length, I had cut off the weighted tip to the point 
where I was a little too high. I liked it, and trimmed it in to pitch 
as best I could. I had thrown out the broken reed, so for a rivet, I 
used a tiny shoe makers "tap" nail. Later that week I took the #9 up 
also. Seemed logical at the time. Opened up a lot of pop tunes for me 
(I didn't DO country or blues back then).

 This is just a perfect example of how a person can mess up really bad, 
and some good comes out of it. It started as an accident.

smo-joe