Ask Harp Tech Expert Kinya Pollard

Kinya,

Have you ever experienced harps going sharp over time?  This seems counterintuitive to me, but I have noticed that harps I use often, are reading about 5 to 7 cents sharp on the 4 blow and 4 draw for example.  It is perceptable to my ear.  I hear recordings of myself and they sound unpleasant.  This is compounded by the fact that my 5 draw is consistently running a few cents flat (on it's way to being blown out by me overplaying), so the contrast is noticeable. continue reading...

I'm having a hard time getting my reed plates off the comb...

There is usually one or two screws that are really tight and I'm afraid I might have stripped my lee Oskar philips screw driver. 

Does anyone else have this issue and have any ninja tricks they can share to remove really stubborn screws? I have a powerbender that I'm trying to setup and I have one screw I can't remove.

Hi there!

Sorry to bother you one more time.

So, I´ve been tuning my harps, and I have a huge problem:

The variation of the pitch. I guess is from the temperature difference between my mouth and out.

In a video you talk about keeping the harps warm, but how do you do it?

Thank you so mush.

Best regards.

Hi Kinya

Great series on harp tech thanks.  I live in France and am struggling to get 0-80 tap and 3/32 bolts to do some reed replacements. Would M2.5 do the job? Thanks

Andy

Hi there!

I recently order the seydel version of the UST.

Do you think the old one was better? 

Thank you so much. 

Best regards. 

Hello Harp Techs

I recentlty reviewed No.5 Harp Tech Series and was pleased to see/hear the video content was relevant and timeless (the only exception was that now you can purchase the Richard Sleigh reed removal anvil).

David and I created seven Harp Tech Series, including: continue reading...

Hello Kinya am working on a Hohner CBH 2016 for a person. And this is the first time I have ever messed with a chromatic harmonica. The things that I have noticed with it. Reeds 1 blow and 4 blow with slide out had a rattling sound. Reed 12 draw and 12 blow with slide out are slow to respond. continue reading...

Hello Kinya I have been messing around with tuning some of my older harmonicas. And I use a dremel 8220 which might be a bit of over kill. This time in tuning I ran into something that has not happened before. I was re-tuning a MS Big River Harp. The tuning came out fine. But the reeds on holes 1,2, and 3 on the blow plate. Fell back into the slot after tuning them. Could it be that on low power on my dremel that the vibrations just from one tap. Forced the reed back into the slot. Or could it mean that it is a weak/bad reed. continue reading...

Copied from a recent Richard Sleigh blog, 

After more than two decades of flipping between the terms embossing and burnishing, I finally resorted to looking the words up in a dictionary. I was shocked at how wrong the term embossing is and how right the term burnishing is.

I am making a new tool that makes reed / slot work a lot more easy and accurate than ever before and I wanted a name for it that was, well, accurate. I’m calling it the Reed / Slot Burnishing Tool. continue reading...

Hello Kinya, continue reading...