JDR Trochilus: A Look inside and its potential as a customizing platform

[dominico]

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First Impressions of the Trochilus (also branded the Bushman Game Changer here in the US)

• It is conceptually two Richter harmonicas stacked on one another. Slide out is the "key" of the harmonica, slide in is basically another richter harp a semitone higher. It is currently available in C, A, G, D, Bb, and LowF, which if you ordered a full set would give you a richter harp in every key except for E.
• Price. It costs less than $90 USD. But since it's conceptually 2 harps in one, you could think of it as $45 per harp, but now they are sandwiched together so you can quickly borrow notes from the other harp.
• Expressive bending. It bends like a well made diatonic. It bends beautifully.
• It plays very airtight out of the box. I am not the best overblow but I was able to to get an ugly overblow on it.
• It is very compact. Just barely bigger than a diatonic, and much smaller than the EastTop 10 hole chromatic which is the other 10 hole chromatic I have to compare with it.
• It is easy to disassemble and reassemble. I can take it fully apart and put it back together in about a minute.
• It comes in three different popular tunings, Richter, Paddy Richter, and Solo

My gripes with it (opportunities to improve)

• The wonky "Jetsons" look. Yes it looks unique. Some people probably really like that. I like unique looking stuff as well but this thing just makes me feel like Mr. Spacely is about to show up at any minute and scream at me to get back to work.
• An addition to the above point, the fact the reedplates and comb are not convenient rectangles makes for more work for customizers, although I'm sure it could present some surprise advantages
• The Slide: It adds 16mm ( 5/8 of an inch) extra length the overall thing. Without that extra length the Trochilus would be about as pocket sized as a diatonic
• The Slide: The way it was designed it cannot be easily flipped upside down to switch which key is the "slide out" key.
• The Slide: Slides are inherently fragile and add fragidity to the harmonica. You can't simply pocket it, it needs to be carried in a hard case, if you drop it and bend the slide you are SOL, etc.
• I wish it came in more tunings. Being able to get a Powerbender version out of the box would make my life a lot easier

The Size
Here I have taken some photos comparing the Trochilus with a Seydel 1847. In a couple photos I removed the slide, just so you can see, without the slide, just how close to a diatonic it actually gets.

In the bottom two photos Notice how different the size looks without the slider vs with the slider

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[dominico]

The Comb and reed plates

The comb is the same thickness as a diatonic comb. This means the Trochilus is the same height as a diatonic harmonica and feels very very familiar in your hand.

The comb and reedplates are not rectangles, but instead this vaguely trapezoidal shape which serves to give it a unique look but also presumably to slim it down. You can tell when you look inside and compare it to other chromatics that they tried to elminate as much "unecessary space" as possible. Which most likely leads to why it feels so airtight despite not having any valves.

It is organized as follows Slide Out Hole 1, Slide In Hole 1, Slide out hole 2, Slide in Hole 2, etc.

Each of the 20 holes has the reed it is interacting with stacked exactly above it, not in any diagonal or horizontal pattern.
The midline bar going across the center of the comb is most likely on there for structural support, unless there is something else I am missing.

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[dominico]

Customizing Opportunities
Retuning
Obviously, retuning it to various tunings is a huge opportunity here.

The first thing I can think is that a Diminished Tuned version would be a sweet way to have a pocket chromatic with the same octave range as a saxophone. If you want more range, go with an Augmented (whole tone) tuning.

These tunings, combined with the fact that you can bend just fine on this thing, should make for an extremely expressive and fun to play pocket chromatic for Jazz enthusiasts. Yes, they could use the Solo Tuning, or retune it to Bebop, but I've played Bebop, its just not "bendy" enough for me.

Half valving
You can overblow this harp, but now with the slide you don't need to. What you could do is half valve it instead. That would make it even more airtight and also add expression to the blow notes.

Slide Diatonic Tunings
Chromatics no longer cost hundreds of dollars, and this chromatic is also tiny. It is now feasible to be able to carry a dozen of these things in a case which would normally hold a dozen diatonics. So now it could hold a dozen slide diatonics.

What would a Blues oriented slide diatonic tuning look like? I have some ideas, maybe that should be another thread. Get ready for speed and bending possibilites that have never before been achievable in blues playing.

The Slide
This is my biggest (really only) gripe about this thing. I want a smaller, less conspicuous slide. And I want to be able to flip it so that pushing the slide drops the tone rather than raising it.
On this slide the slots are completely vertical, so flipping the slider won't do much. Even if it did, the spring attachement mechanism would cause problems.
On other slides you can flip it over by drilling a small hole or otherwise modifying the slide to connect to the spring. On this slide there is a fork which juts out the end that pushes against the spring, which effectively makes it impossible to flip over.

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I wonder, with that cut out in the back of the comb if a reedplate slider system couldn't solve most of my troubles here...

[FingerSinger]

Thank you for the review Dominico!

It’s a pity the slider is not reversible, i was thinking of getting one for irish music. Retuning 20 reeds up a tone is not very fun.

Does it have the key stamped somewhere on it?

I wonder if some customizers could come up with more conventionslly rectangle shape of the comb, cut off parts of the reedplate and add some custom slider to make it even smaller..

[triona]

That seems to me a quite interesting construction, design and layout.

But one thing I do not understand: What do you win by fliping around the slide?
As far as I can recognize, I presume all the notes of the key of C are located on the upper reedplate - each draw reed following a blow reed in regular alternation. And the same with the key of C# on the bottom reedplate. If that is not true, please correct me.

And if you would flip the slide around its horizontal axle like one usually does on any other chromatic for changing from sharps by pushing the slide to flats by pushing the slide, you would change nothing. Or do you want to flip the slide around its vertical axle so that the knob comes from the right to the left? That would be the only way to change something on the function of the slide. Or do I misunderstand something?


And one more downside I discovered too - at least to my opinion: The reeds are welded. This exacerbates repair, change of reeds and some kinds of customizing.


dear greetings
triona

[Brendan]

Thanks for the excellent photos and info, Dom!

I've been an admirer of this thin comb and vertical-slot slider format for some time. It's a very old design, dating back to the 19th century, with some commercial models made in the mid 20th century.

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In recent years I've made quite a few prototypes using this layout.

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SLIDER MISTAKE
From that experience I can instantly see that JDR have made a basic mistake with the tuning layout and slider. They have the home slide-out notes C/D in comb slot 1a, and the slide-in notes C#/D# in comb slot 1b. That is, all the slide-out notes are to the left of the slide-in notes. Since the slide moves from right to left, this means they need a slider with 11 slots.

What they should have done was reverse the tuning, so comb slot 1a was slide-in C#/D# and slot 1b was slide-out C/D. In other words, all the slide-out notes are to the RIGHT of the slide-in notes. This way, the slider would need only 10 slots, and avoid the ugly extra 11th slot on the right. Probably the front of the harp could have been made shorter overall as well, reducing the overall size of the harp further.

REVERSING THE SLIDER
As Triona points out, flipping the slider makes no difference with this design. However, if you made a 10-slot slider and retain the existing tuning, you would get semitone down slide action, because all the slide-out notes would be the sharp scale. With the current slider there's no other option except to retune the instrument.

[FingerSinger]

Interesting observation Brendan!

From what I see Trochilus / Bushman Game Changer made quite a hype in harmonica circles (or maybe my harmonica circles are very narrow? )

So maybe (hopefully) we'll see Suzuki / Hohner / Seydel improving on this design and coming up with their model. They could make 10-hole slider instead, and make it even closer in dimensions to diatonic.

They have to be fast though, I'd expect the interest to diminish with time.

[triona]

Aha! Indeed I suspected that there must be something quirky with this layout in connection with the movement of the slider. But I just could not grasp what it might be. I could not imagine the layout following Dominick's description. And I missed to count the holes on the Trochilus's slider. And for further investigation and examination and speculative guessing it had been too late in the night.


dear greetings
triona

[triona]

BTW: Is this part called "slide" or "slider" in correct English? I have seen both of them.

[dominico]

BTW: Is this part called "slide" or "slider" in correct English? I have seen both of them.

I don't know either! I think they are both acceptable.

You are right, the reeds are welded I did not catch that.

Comparing the Trochilus reedplate with the EastTop T10-40 reedplate, you could probably take chromatic reedplates and recut them to fit the trochilus if you needed to start replacing blown reeds. You may have to move a few screw holes..

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if you made a 10-slot slider and retain the existing tuning, you would get semitone down slide action, because all the slide-out notes would be the sharp scale.

I've been thinking about this since you posted it; I might try to make a plastic slider, though I'm not sure how it would hold up.