Brendan Power

Windsaver valves are used in various kinds of accordions and harmonicas, to eliminate air loss through opposing reed slots. All chromatic harmonicas are fully-valved (one valve per reed) and many diatonic players like to use half-valving in their harps (where only the low-pitched reeds in each chamber are valve-affected, enabling diatonic-style note bending to be retained). This is an idea I pioneered in 1980, which is becoming increasingly popular.

A big factor stopping more players trying valves in their harmonicas is the fiddly process of fitting them: one-by-one, with glue. It's skilled work, and easy to get wrong. After nearly four decades of laboriously fitting individual valves to my own harps I finally came up with a better idea: the Gasket-Valve!

This is a one-piece unit with ALL the internal valves attached. Made of a thin resilient material, the Gasket-Valve fits between the comb and draw reedplate without any adhesive. Its precision design aligns all the valves perfectly to the reed slots, with the minimum valve footprint sitting on the reedplate. Combined with a slightly dimpled texture to reduce capillary attraction, this eliminates sticking, and reduces valve 'slap' noise to virtual inaudibility. Plus, because all the valves are part of the same piece of material, they lie flat by default.

Aside from the superior valve fit and action, there is another big plus of the Gasket-Valve: it functions as a sealing gasket too! It's well known that the fit of hard metal reedplates and harmonica combs is never perfect, and many players go to great lengths to sand them flat. As you tighten up the reedplate screws the Gasket-Valve slightly compresses between the hard comb/reedplate surfaces and fills any gaps, sealing the parts together for superior airtightness.

FITTING

Once you've disassembled your harmonica, fitting the Gasket-Valve is simplicity itself. I show how in the tech video, for the main types of diatonic harmonica: lipped-comb Richter harps, and traditional sandwich-comb Richter harps.

ORDERING OPTIONS

I've designed my unique easy-fit Gasket-Valves for a wide range of popular harps. All you need to do is choose the brand/model you play, plus the correct tuning option, and you'll be posted Gasket-Valve parts that fit your harp perfectly.

I've designed two main styles of diatonic Gasket-Valves, to suit the two main tuning scales. In the standard Richter Tuning used by 90% of players, the breathing pattern reverses at hole #7. In the lower 6 holes the draw note is higher than the blow, and vice-versa in holes 7-10. For half-valving, in order to retain the original Richter bending notes (holes 1,2,3,4,6 draw, & holes 8,9,10 blow), whilst adding the benefit of valves on the normally unbendable notes, you need inside valves on holes 1-6 and outside valves on holes 7-10. I add one more inside valve on hole 7, to allow valved bending expression on it. This is the style of Gasket-Valves you need for Richter, Paddy-Richter, Country Tuning, Melody Maker, Natural Minor, Harmonic Minor and any other tuning where the breathing pattern reverses at hole #7.

In the past 20 years I've pioneered Regular Breath tunings for diatonic harps. Because they have just a single breathing pattern and allow draw bending on every hole, they're quickly becoming more popular. In these tunings, the draw note is ALWAYS higher than the blow note, in all 10 holes. Well-known examples are my own PowerBender, PowerDraw and PowerChromatic tunings, as well as Will Wilde’s tuning (which is based on PowerBender). Other great Regular Breath tunings are Augmented, Diminished and Easy Diatonic. The correct way to half-valve all these tunings is to have all 10 valves on the inside, and none on the outside.

To ensure you get the correct Gasket-Valve set for the harps YOU play, please make the right choice in the drop-down options in the Payment box.