Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

I apologize if this has been asked, but I haven’t seen it in my quick search of this forum.

Recently, I’ve been considering to half valve my harmonicas since I’m not interested in overblowing but I am interested in extra blow expression. All my harmonicas are in ED tuning, so it’s a regular breath pattern which means I would only need them on my draw reeds. I currently have seydel session steels though at some point I may transition to 1847s. I have a couple of questions before I try Brendan’s valve product on one of my current session steels.

1. Are valves a pain for maintenance? I open up my harps every 6 months or so for cleaning, and I’m not clear how to clean valves without damaging them. Do half valves diatonics require more cleaning and maintainance in general. Also, do I have to worry about valves breaking over time?

2. Since I want to standardize on metal combs, and combs can sometimes not be perfectly flat, I like the thought of valves possibly increasing airtightness due to some flex in the material when compressed. It made me wonder - can I also add valve like material (or ultra thin foam?) to the blow comb that covers the entire reed plate, EXCEPT the reeds, so that it is airtight on the top of the comb along with the bottom? In fact, I wonder why everyone doesn’t add some gasket material on the top and bottom of combs that compress a tiny bit to give better air tightness without the need of sanding and such.
3. Any other downsides I should be prepared for when half valving besides loss of overblow capability? I heard if you blow hard, in you won’t get any sound. Does that mean you can’t play as loud on half-valved harmonicas?

Thanks for your questions Rishio. To answer:

1. My Gasket-Valves are no problem for maintenance. Simply lift the valve unit away and clean the comb/reedplates as normal. The material is quite rugged so you can also rinse or wipe it - but wipe in the direction of the valves, or you may bend them.

2. You can add a gasket to the top of the comb as well. In the past I offered this as an option along with the Gasket-Valves, but not with the current version. If you flat-sand your blow reedplate and the comb is flat, an upper gasket won't add any airtightness. You may also lose some of the tone from the metal comb, I'm not sure. However you could pretty easily make your own if you want to test the effect.

3. A half-valved harp is probably louder than a normal one on the blow reeds, because no air is lost leaking through the draw reed slots. It will have a different feeling in terms of breath response, but you quickly adjust. You can blow just as hard, but may need to widen the blow reed gap slightly if reeds blank out on hard breaths.

Thanks Brendan. I’m so curious about how it sounds & feels - do you think completely blocking off my draw reeds with a piece of paper or tape (on comb side of the draw reed) would accurately simulate how the blow reeds would respond and sound with valves?

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. I just put plastic Saran wrap between the comb and the draw reed on my harmonica. That allowed me to instantly experience what i can expect with valved harmonicas (of course my draw reeds wouldn’t work anymore till I took of the saran wrap).

Right away, I found I could stabily bend holes 1-3 (which I play throught the left side of my mouth TB style). Holes 4-10 (which I play through the right side of my mouth) will take more practice so I’m not sure if I will be able to bend them stable a 1/2 tone. The sound was definitely more focused and a bit more punchy. It some how had a more mono feel to it than a stereo feel without valves. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’ll need to play around with this more.

Anyway, it was a great simple experiment, and I recommend that anyone who is curious about valved tunings, but don’t have the time or money to invest in it - try it out with some simple saranwrap!