Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

I'm proud to announce the MORBENDZ: a radical new diatonic harmonica, and the first harp to be released in my X-Reed partnership with Andre Coelho. The name says it all: 14 easy bends (instead of 8 on a standard Richter harp). It's possible because of the combination of several innovative design fea...

Triona: thanks for your kind comments.

Since I know the JDR people from meeting them at trade fairs in the past, I've passed on the tuning/slider suggestion, plus a few other ideas for improving the Trochilus. It's already good, but can still be better

Good thinking on the way to test quickly. TBH I think you're putting too much weight on reducing the number of millimetres between mouth and reeds. Compared to a normal chromatic (especially the modern Suzuki or CX-12 inspired ones), it's already quite a bit less distance on the Trochilus. As long a...

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 shoul...

"I imagine a vertically shifting mouthpiece would also allow for an improved economy of motion over a traditional slider as well." I'm not so sure, Dom. I've tried all three types of hole shifting discussed above, and always returned to the slider. The non-slider concept is good in the sense that i...

Well done Marty! The next one you do will be faster

I still think a customised chromatic harmonica is the best solution, and available right now. However, you said: Yeah, I was thinking about using slider for that. It's not ideal though cause sometimes I want to play harmonica in a holder with my concertina. There's a solution for that: Vern Smith's ...

How's $2.50 for affordable? l020458_s_01_9360.jpg A basic so-called "child's hacksaw" will work well to cut up reedplates, and is exactly what I used back in 1980 to make my 11-hole harps. Although I use more high-tech reedplate slicing methods these days, I still have one in my workshop and use it ...

Aha, the 11-Hole Stretch-Harp rides again! It's good to see someone exploring the Stretch-Harp idea, and I'm glad you like my old Regular-Breath tuning from the 1980s. I've been through quite a few changes of preferred tuning since then, tuning entire sets of harps to a new scale every 10 years or s...

UNIVERSAL TURBOSLIDE I'm glad Jim Antaki got in touch with you about your development to the Turboslide concept. He's a busy man and can be rather unresponsive. SLIPSLIDER Your video demonstrates well what I tried to explain to Richter players about the SlipSlider in the past: just put it in one pos...