Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

I was cleaning my Diminshed Lucky 13 and noticed that the draw plate in completely valved. Is this how they come or is it a factory mistake? Also what is the advantage if any, of having the draw plate valved?

Piro39 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 02, 2025 10:14 pm I was cleaning my Diminshed Lucky 13 and noticed that the draw plate in completely valved. Is this how they come or is it a factory mistake? Also what is the advantage if any, of having the draw plate valved?

I could not find any advantage of those valves. But I hit upon a severe disadvantage: They always stuck and blocked the reeds when the harmonica has not been played for some - even quite short - time. So I removed them all - after I had tried to tweak them unsuccesfully.
Playability, articulation, air requirement, volume and bending were not affected by this.

That’s the correct method for half-valving a diminished harmonica. Since it uses uniform draw bends throughout, the valves are consistent across the entire range of the harp.

One advantage of this setup is that you can bend the blow notes. For example, it's nice to be able to bend a blow note down a half step. If you can't bend, you have to go one hole to the left and change breath direction to achieve the same note.

Another is that some players may simply prefer the way it feels and responds. I'm not sure how much of a difference half-valving makes in terms of playability on the Lucky 13 - you say you don't notice a difference. I do know there's a noticeable difference between a valved Seydel 1847 and an un-valved one.

Using valves does require some maintenance, which takes a bit of getting used to.

jasonrogers wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 2:18 am That’s the correct method for half-valving a diminished harmonica. Since it uses uniform draw bends throughout, the valves are consistent across the entire range of the harp.

One advantage of this setup is that you can bend the blow notes. For example, it's nice to be able to bend a blow note down a half step. If you can't bend, you have to go one hole to the left and change breath direction to achieve the same note.

Aha, I just thought there must be any advantage I did not yet recognize.
The reason why I did not, is that I rarely play blow bends, at least consciously and systematically.

jasonrogers wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 2:18 am Another is that some players may simply prefer the way it feels and responds. I'm not sure how much of a difference half-valving makes in terms of playability on the Lucky 13 - you say you don't notice a difference. I do know there's a noticeable difference between a valved Seydel 1847 and an un-valved one.

Nearly all of my Seydels are unvalved. Only some of the extra low 1847 have 1 or 2 valves. So I can not tell.

And the Samplers (= double-diatonic with slide) are fully valved of course. I notoriously manage to blow or suck them out. Usually I do not replace them, as for I can not find a real loss in playability and sound. Maybe both is due to the excessively hard and loud playing I sometimes pefer.

jasonrogers wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 2:18 am Using valves does require some maintenance, which takes a bit of getting used to.

Of course, that is right. But when I have to poke free all of the valves of a nearly new harmonica with a pick each single time I take it out of its bag and want to begin to play, that is way too much. Of course, I first disasembled the harmonica and tried to tweak the valves by shortening them a millimeter or so and give them a little kink on their end. But as this did not help at all I removed the valves.

Maybe my bad experiences with the valves of the Easttops are due to a bad quality of the valves? Maybe there might be better ones which do not tend to stick that extremely?

It was a conscious and logical decision to half-valve the Diminished Lucky 13. As Jason Rogers said, the valves do give you isolated-reed bends on the blow notes if you want them. However my main reason was that half-valving balances up the expression and volume on draw and blow reeds.

With them in place you get purer, louder blow notes without compromising any draw reed expression. They also allow you to get true pitch vibrato on the blow reeds, as well as draws. And my experience with half-valving since I invented that setup n around 1980 is that I never have any problems with inside valves. It's always outside valves that cause problems - and a half-valved harp like the Diminished Lucky 13 has no outside valves.

I'm surprised you removed them Triona. The only advantage of that would be to allow overblowing, but AFAIK you don't usually do that?

triona wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 11:51 am
Of course, that is right. But when I have to poke free all of the valves of a nearly new harmonica with a pick each single time I take it out of its bag and want to begin to play, that is way too much. Of course, I first disasembled the harmonica and tried to tweak the valves by shortening them a millimeter or so and give them a little kink on their end. But as this did not help at all I removed the valves.

Maybe my bad experiences with the valves of the Easttops are due to a bad quality of the valves? Maybe there might be better ones which do not tend to stick that extremely?

Triona,
Much like chromatics, I warm up the harps before playing to reduce condensation. (It's often cold where I am.)
I also try to keep my head up instead of tilting towards the floor, and to be generally conscious of playing too wet.
This seems to help a bit.