FingerSinger wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 8:22 am
I was experimenting with micro magnets as weights and it works quite nicely.
I'm not sure I want to go this way due to possible danger of magnet swallowing though. They seem to hold quite firmly on the reeds, but still, as far as I know it's not at all desirable to have super strong micromagnet inside your body

So just wanted to remind you - be careful with magnets!
I tried two quick experiments today: One of them was using 2mm x 1mm magnets as "weights" for the draw reeds, on the coverplate side so I don't accidentally swallow them

It was actually very quick and easy to drop a magnet on and slide it around using my titanium tweezers to get the exact pitch I was looking for.
I marked the spot where the magnet sits with an engraver on the reedplate next to the reed.
I pulled it off, dropped it back on again, and had the pitch I was looking for again in just a few seconds. That was pretty cool! It may start doing this intead of blu-tak on Seydels, I'll carry one around for a week or so and see how it goes.
For the blow reeds, since they are riveted on the "hole side" of the reedplate, the 2mm magnet was just too wide to attach them from the coverplate side, I've ordered 1mm x 1mm we'll see how those do for the blow reeds.
So with the magnets, right now I can switch between normal, "dorian" and easy third tunings just by moving the magnets to their indexed spots on the reeds.
In the photo below on the draw 3 reed I've indexed two spots, the spot closer to the tip drops the reed a full tone, the spot below that one drops the reed a semitone

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The other thing I did was put a magnet on a reed and then put the opposite polarity magnet in the turboslide.
It raised the pitch!
This is very cool. Though it would require even more coverplate clearance than I currently have in order to further explore this idea as something practical.
Regarding the drawplate turboslide, I am making progress. Ultimately the standard coverplate clearance just isn't enough space to make everything work, but on the upside I created a 1mm spacer for the coverplate to sit on and that seems to be doing well.

- capture.PNG (168.65 KiB) Viewed 5445 times
I also found smaller set screws, 3mm x 3mm. If only I could find 3mm x 2mm that would be the bees' knees!
I've settled on using 2mm x 1mm magnets for the tuning. They are weaker than Jim's turboslide magnets, but I've found that they can at least lower the pitch by a semitone, and the pitch is more stable, with a natural and pleasant sounding timbre. I cannot tell that the pitch is being altered by a magnet, whereas with the stronger magnets you can tell rather easily by thier almost artificial sounding timbre.
I took a page from Jim Antaki's blowplate slider and created an integrated spring just using the natural elastic properties of the plastic I'm printing with, so that's one less component to have to source.
After looking closet at Brendan's overblow booster design I've decided that it is a better slider mechanism that what the original turboslide was doing. So my next slider iteration will look very much like a marriage between the overblow booster and Turboslide, but on the draw plate.
I'm currently drawing out the overall slider platform, which will ideally be usable for other projects as well in the future.
When I fix the draw slide in place it sounds very nice. I just need to get the tolerances tight enough for the slider to work predictably.
I may have to switch to the .2mm nozzle on my printer, rather than the standard .4mm. Prints will take longer and I will probably have to recallibrate my XY compensation, but I'm so close to a workable solution I can taste it