Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

No worries. Busy people are busy, and usually for good reason. Of course my head may explode if I have to wait to much longer to find out what new toys you have for us. I made a slide harmonica for a Turkish Saz player, it has one makaam on each reedplate so he can switch back and forth, but the not...

Great news.
I like half valved Bebop and now it will be an easy retune.
A pair in a switch harp should be fun.

This is pretty cool and tempting to try.
I would be tempted to bebop it.
It seems like it might be a fun way to retune a half-Valved Lucky 13.
A bebop D would give full scales in G and D and in a switch harp you could have fast decorations and loads of note choices.

If not it’s not too bad of a retune on a Slide harp or a Koch chromatic.
I made myself one and like it. I modified the comb and made new covers,...
Or you can get one of Brendan’s Switch Harps and make one that way. Those are very cool.

You sound Great! I really like my switch harp. Mine is a basically a pair of half- Valved Paddy Richter's. I haven’t had as much time to play or experiment with it as I would have liked but it is a blast so far. The moving mouthpiece feels odd and unwieldy for about 20 minutes, and then it is no pro...

Check out overblow.com. Lots of tunings there with an awesome interactive chart. (Pentabender is not one) It will save you reinventing the wheel, and give some good ideas / starting points. Also, if you google pentabender or Newton Four Key you can find an article with a chart of a few tunings. It’s...

It’s easier for me on the 270, you will need a better memory than me anyway. I just did a major retune (changed the key, and tuning, and made it flatslide) of a crosstuned Easttop Harmonica and made a few mistakes before I made a large simple map to guide me as I soldered and filed and tuned. Now it...

Thanks for the advice and links! Technique could definitely be a part of it. I’m a better tinkerer than player. I did get that first one playing better, it still needs a little work though. I had missed some of that. I’ll try the overvalve plates, they shouldn’t be too hard to cut from stock. I’ll b...

I’m having trouble with some of the bends, I did not valve the x reed plate at all. All reeds on that plate are lightly embossed, flat gap, and are 2 semitones below the corresponding active reed. Do you think half valving the x reed plate would help? Or would that defeat too much of the reed intera...

Thanks ,
I’ll be sure to watch out for that when I put mine together.