Re: [Harp-L] Old Meisterklasse, bits & bobs


On Jul 11, 2008, at 6:50 PM, Steve Baker wrote:

I know lots of harmonica players who rave on about the old Meisterklasse and I played them myself from when they came on the market until about 1990, when I returned to playing Marine Bands. The reason was simple - while listening to one of my own recordings from the early 80s I realised I greatly preferred the harp sound, which was played on an MB. Since then I've never really played anything else but Marine Bands.

Recently I got Hohner to make a test comb which had screw holes for both old MK and MB Deluxe reed plates, so I was able to make a direct comparison. I still own some old MK models and took a pretty much unused pair of C reed plates, which I mounted on this comb. I was most disappointed - they weren't at all like I remembered them and were leaky as anything. In fact by the standards of today's Hohner Classic harps, which I'm accustomed to using, they were virtually unplayable. I took them off and mounted a set of current production MB Deluxe plates. The difference was like night and day, the new reed plates were loud, responsive and punchy when mounted on the same comb and with the same covers.

What this comparison made clear to me was the undoubted superiority of the reed plates Hohner has been producing during the last five plus years in comparison to those they made earlier. The main reason for this is the closer tolerances between reed and slot,

I suspect Hohner changed the male punch dies AND the female 'receiver' dies. There are only so many cycles built into a set of dies. Let's say (just for figures) that the die is good for 10,ooo cycles. This means that 5,ooo will be superior, 2,5oo will be ok, 1,25o will be passable, 417 will be wretched, 417 will be junk, and 416 will be a crime to sell. Roughly tantamount to buying an automobile which was made on January 2. (The day when every one is hung over). lol

The male punch dies will wear out first because they move and aren't set as immovable. What happens is that (eventually) the tops of the reed plates wind up with reed slots with rounded edges. This is ever so infinitessimally slight BUT grows in time until the plates are to the point where they are best used as 'crucible fodder'

Then when the more stable female receiver dies start to wear, there is a slight swaging of brass PAST the bottoms of the reed slots. A sort of volcano effect. This is unimportant for plates where all the reeds will be mounted on the male side of the plate, but for CHROMOS (where half the reeds are mounted on the female side of the plate), it can lead to a gradual lessening of quality or assembly.

The perfect solution would be to start with a plate of 1.05 mm thick and slurry hone the male side of the plates by .04 mm till the slot edges are sharp. On chromos, it would also be necessary to strop the female sides (maybe .02 mm) to remove the sharp ragged exit points. I understand that this would add to the price. But you would immediately get a superior item to work with.

smokey-joe

which were introduced in the early 2000s across the board on Hohner Classic diatonics and chromatics. Interestingly enough, exactly the same process was described by Dave Payne when talking about Seydel's very recent improvements as used on the 1847. Where did they get that idea from, I wonder?

Steve

Steve Baker
steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.stevebaker.de
www.bluesculture.com
www.youtube.com/stevebakerbluesharp

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