My horizontally moving Slider-Mouthpiece invention has some useful advantages over conventional harmonica slider assemblies. Here I describe its back story and essential features:
https://youtu.be/iU-TrFzMbh8
INTEGRATED SLIDER-MOUTHPIECE - Tech Tuesday #7
Re: INTEGRATED SLIDER-MOUTHPIECE - Tech Tuesday #7
I have a Seydel deluxe steel in PC tuning, half valved. I love it's sound - but I feel it could be more responsive. The slide assembly im not thrilled with. It's got a long travel on it, and gets off track easiky. An aftermarket mod like this would make such a difference.
Re: INTEGRATED SLIDER-MOUTHPIECE - Tech Tuesday #7
I know what you mean... That traditional multi-part slide assembly is prone to leakage. Try using slider oil on the slider, and Vaseline between the stationary parts, to improve the airtightness.
Besides the integrated mouthpiece/slider, I have designed a low profile two-piece 'self sealing' slide assembly for the Hohner 270/Seydel Deluxe type of chromatic, but never publicly released them. Maybe it's time to look into that.
Besides the integrated mouthpiece/slider, I have designed a low profile two-piece 'self sealing' slide assembly for the Hohner 270/Seydel Deluxe type of chromatic, but never publicly released them. Maybe it's time to look into that.
Re: INTEGRATED SLIDER-MOUTHPIECE - Tech Tuesday #7
I'm interested in trying this out for the Game Changer Harmonica. I notice, if I play it with out the mouthpiece, I can feel the reeds more during bends and such.
The mouthpiece it comes with is already pretty shallow, which is good, but I'm curious just how close I can get to those reeds.
One question - it seems with this design on the Game Changer, that pushing the slide in would shift the hole 1 off to a spot where no reeds would play. If you wanted to play 1 blow and then 1 blow slide-in, you would actually need to shift to hole 2.
The alternative would be to design it with the slide pushing in from the left side. That'll be a big change in the way I hold the instrument! Another alternative would be retuning so that each chamber's reeds swap with the chamber below it. That is probably the answer via a lot of blue tak.
I'm curious what thoughts you all may have had concerning this. Ideally I'd like to engineer it so that the function is very similar to the current design, just with less distance to the reeds.
The mouthpiece it comes with is already pretty shallow, which is good, but I'm curious just how close I can get to those reeds.
One question - it seems with this design on the Game Changer, that pushing the slide in would shift the hole 1 off to a spot where no reeds would play. If you wanted to play 1 blow and then 1 blow slide-in, you would actually need to shift to hole 2.
The alternative would be to design it with the slide pushing in from the left side. That'll be a big change in the way I hold the instrument! Another alternative would be retuning so that each chamber's reeds swap with the chamber below it. That is probably the answer via a lot of blue tak.
I'm curious what thoughts you all may have had concerning this. Ideally I'd like to engineer it so that the function is very similar to the current design, just with less distance to the reeds.
Re: INTEGRATED SLIDER-MOUTHPIECE - Tech Tuesday #7
In my opinion, JDR made a mistake with the tuning layout of the Trochilus.
Due to the comb design, the two blow/draw pairs in each mouth hole are adjacent to each other, separated by a comb divider opening to a slide hole.
Since the slider is pushed from the right and moves right to left, they should have had the default slide-out scale starting from the RIGHT of the two adjacent comb chambers (instead of the left, as in the production model). This would mean the slider only needs 10 holes, instead of 11 as at present.
It's more elegant and avoids that bodged 11th slider hole. Also would result in a stronger slider.
If you tune your Trochilus this way, you could make an integrated one piece mouth-slider in the most efficient manner.
But, although it's physically possible, I wouldn't use Blue Tack for such a comprehensive retune. When I first started using it in around 1980 it was always intended for reversible tuning of just the odd reed - not all the reeds in a harmonica! Too slow, and it looks ugly...
For a comprehensive retune, use a combination of solder to lower reeds and preferably a rubber polishing wheel to raise them. With practice you can retune a reed up to 3 semitones higher (and a lot more lower) in just a few seconds.
Good luck with your project! It will be interesting to see if you find much difference in performance from the stick Trochilus mouthpiece/slider, which is pretty gootin my opinion.
Although it's a worthwhile project to try, I suspect that you'll end up concluding that the gain in volume/response will be too small to justify the amount of work and time involved. But you won't know until you try
Due to the comb design, the two blow/draw pairs in each mouth hole are adjacent to each other, separated by a comb divider opening to a slide hole.
Since the slider is pushed from the right and moves right to left, they should have had the default slide-out scale starting from the RIGHT of the two adjacent comb chambers (instead of the left, as in the production model). This would mean the slider only needs 10 holes, instead of 11 as at present.
It's more elegant and avoids that bodged 11th slider hole. Also would result in a stronger slider.
If you tune your Trochilus this way, you could make an integrated one piece mouth-slider in the most efficient manner.
But, although it's physically possible, I wouldn't use Blue Tack for such a comprehensive retune. When I first started using it in around 1980 it was always intended for reversible tuning of just the odd reed - not all the reeds in a harmonica! Too slow, and it looks ugly...
For a comprehensive retune, use a combination of solder to lower reeds and preferably a rubber polishing wheel to raise them. With practice you can retune a reed up to 3 semitones higher (and a lot more lower) in just a few seconds.
Good luck with your project! It will be interesting to see if you find much difference in performance from the stick Trochilus mouthpiece/slider, which is pretty gootin my opinion.
Although it's a worthwhile project to try, I suspect that you'll end up concluding that the gain in volume/response will be too small to justify the amount of work and time involved. But you won't know until you try