Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

Hi Umut, I'm not ready to offer my accordion reed harps for sale yet - still experimenting with various aspects to make them work better. No time scale to offer them, except sometime in 2020.

But you don't need to wait for me: I suggest you get hold of some reeds and start experimenting

Umut: You can use steel reeds as long as the instrument is allowed to dry out after playing. As for reed block widths etc, they are specified in the Harmonikas site tech details: https://www.harmonikas.cz/admin/files/ModuleText/16-sortiment-sizes.pdf Another place to buy accordion reeds is via the H...

I haven't settled on a final comb design yet, still improving it. As for reed lengths, they vary a lot depending on the key and range, there is no set rule.

Good luck with your experiments

That's a series of very fundamental questions Umut! It makes me wonder if you have thought this thing through, because it's a lot of thought and work to make a harmonica using accordion reeds. Yes, you need a comb for sure! You could use the wooden ones that come in accordions directly, but they wou...

Glad you like the Harmonikas site Umut, it's pretty cool alright! BTW you can find lots of old accordions for sale on eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=accordion&_trksid=p2380057.m4084.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xaccordion.TRS0 Or just reed sets: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Set-of-Reeds-A-D...

Hi Mustafa, Thanks for your interesting post and request.

The cheapest source of accordion reeds is to buy old accordions from junk shops and remove the reeds. If you want to buy new reeds, including bandoneon reeds and reedplates, you can go here:

https://www.harmonikas.cz/en

I'm not sure if you know Dr. Costas, but recently I developed the Lucky 13 diatonic harmonica: https://www.brendan-power.com/lucky13.php#lucky13 It's available in various tunings, but Richter is the main one. In that configuration it's normal 10-hole Richter plus a duplicated lower octave scale to i...

I received Patrick's kind gift of a Kongsheng Lyra to test out his Inverted Bebop Tuning. It's now retuned to D/G, which only required a few semitone shifts in each octave from Solo C. I'll explore a bit and report back soon

An interesting instrument!

You could test the harmonica application by getting a tube and sealing it to a single harmonica hole with some Blu-Tack or similar. Try differenbt holes on blow and draw to guage the variable effects. I think you'll find the same as I did.

Unfortunately I don't think the panflute device will translate to harmonicas. The difference is that you need to seal the tube to the harmonica to make the reeds sound, which has negative ramifications. Besides the technical difficulty of creating a well sealed sliding mouthpiece adaptor, you would ...