Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

That's not good, I agree. Please email:

enquiries@brendan-power.com

We will sort it out for you. BP

Will based his Wilde tuning on PowerBender. I sent him a couple to try and he liked it, esp. the top octave. However he wanted to change the middle octave a bit to be more like Richter, retaining the 5 draw as a flat 7th in cross harp. His variant works well, though you lose some of the easy chromat...

I'd say it's time to put theory to one side and actually try your ideas out. That's the only way to know if an alternate tuning is really useful or not.

Looking forward to hearing the results

Hard to say without examination if it's a blockage or a damaged reed. You could consult one of the Lucky 13 Recommended Customisers:

http://www.brendan-power.com/lucky13.ph ... dRepairers

They can fix any problems, including reed replacement.

Re. the upper octave, I suggest retune it to something you prefer. On my Paddy harps I retune them to Paddy Solo. Double the root note on holes 7 & 8 and lower 8, 9 blow accordingly. But leave the draw notes the same. Thus is my preferred tuning for Irish playing, but it will work well for other sty...

Embossing is good for any harp. I think the Lucky 13 responds well out of the box, but of course it will be even better with embossing. Regarding the extra low octave, I recommend you add valves to the first two or three holes, inside and out, especially on the lowest G key. They will do far more th...

Yes, or Blue Tack could work. However I'd be adopting a single lipped comb model of harmonica for the reedplates, so any custom comb alternatives would be up to the owner to get made. I have prices in for slicing the reedplates and they are acceptable, so next step is to try a few brands/models to c...

Yes, valves make the low blow reeds play much more strongly.

When I played in the Riverdance Show in the 1990s I created a whole batch of bizarrely tuned slide harmonicas to enable me to play the music as written. Bill Whelan's score had some very tricky parts that could not be played at tempo on any conventional harmonica, but these altered chroms allowed me...

Thanks for the ruminations on this topic people, interesting and helpful. I was away in India for a while and laid low with Giardiasis since I got back, but am recovering now and getting back to various projects - including this one. I sent off some reedplates for slicing into strips by a couple of ...