Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

Thanks for making the video, Ed - good to hear you getting around chromatically on that thing :-) Re. requests for an Ab PowerChromatic: for now the official versions are just D and G until we see how demand develops. However, for those who want them, the regular harps can be easily retuned to other...

Indeed Alan, that's exactly the stuff I'm mulling over. A modular reedplate system opens up a lot of possibilities, but also many questions! One way to keep the cost down for buyers is to sell sets of reeds and ancillary parts that can be attached easily to existing harmonicas. Taking the Special 20...

Thanks for your thoughts on this. Though I've always loved the idea, and it's a fun challenge to turn it into a practical reality, the more I think of it, the less I can see much initial demand for general playing. Your comments tend to confirm that. Certainly it would be handy for trying out differ...

This is another topic first discussed in the Any News thread. I've been doing some testing of the idea, and am getting closer to the point where I think it could be practical to offer modular reedplate harps for sale. Not definite yet, but it's looking more possible. But this is unlike anything I've...

Retuning becomes very fast with practice and the right tools. You could do the change in under 5 minutes from full assembled to reassembled and ready to play if you learn the skills.

Yes, transpose down. Use some slow-down software to hear the tune in G, and then learn by ear.

Personally I don't think so, because you'd have to constantly bend the 5 draw in the most common positions used in Irish music. These are, in order of use: First, Fourth, Third, Second If you wanted to play Melody Maker based in 2nd Position, the equivalent positions would be: Second, Fifth, Fourth,...

We started discussing these harps in the "Any News" thread, but I think they deserve a thread of their own.

I just posted a video demonstrating a couple of variations:
https://youtu.be/jejsiCD172E

There are some interesting queries posted in the Comments by Winslow Yerxa and others.

Yes. It's based on 12 chromatic notes per octave over 4 octaves (the range from hole 1 of a G harp to hole 10 of an F# harp). Actually it should be 48 reeds to cover all the notes, not 47. This is the stock of reeds a company would need to keep. They could be blow or draw reeds depending on orientat...

I mentioned earlier that a manufacturer of modular reed harmonicas would only need 47 reeds to cover every key harp in 4 octaves, from G to F#. That's if they use the same reeds for blow and draw breaths. The simplest way would be to adopt the normal blow reed configuration where the reed is attache...