Custom Harp by Bobby Crow - Review! Also some unbidden thoughts on custom harps in general.

[@31416]

After 18 months of learning I did purchase one custom. Not setup for OB/OD, just an excellent blues setup. My bends where easier to get to right away. More stable to hold. More responsive. It gave me a benchmark sort of. I have learned gapping and profilling. A touch of half embossing. Tuning. I had a reference point. Now I can get an out of the box harp and confidently know it can get to that level of responsiveness and ease of play. My owb custom work is slowly getting up to the reference one. So yeah, a custom harp as a reference was well invested money for me.

[@Tim48103]

Absolutely - it's a wonderful thing to be able to do the work yourself - most folks are kinda scared to open up a harmonica and mess with the reeds - I can tweak harps now my own self, not to the degree that the pro's do it of course, but I can definitely improve the responsiveness of a stock harp using the methods you've listed. I have, tho, ruined a number of perfectly good harps in the process of learning how....

[@31416]

It would be worrying if we could get the same result as the pros who've spent years and often decades honing their craft. Bless them for their patience! A few harps ruined? Yup. I am well on my way to more than a few. Good thing I use "learning harps" (dirt cheap ones) when I try to learn a new technique. 😂

[@norfolknwhey4787]

@@31416same here, I messed up a bunch learning how to work on harps. I’ve got good friends that live near your zip code looking for folks to jam with, are there any good open mics near Savannah?

[@norfolknwhey4787]

Are you from 31416? Such a cool city. When it comes to custom harps, they are not created equal. There are many things done to top-tier harps that are not going to be recognized by the naked eye. You will definitely learn how to improve a harp, but won’t be able to produce a true custom without learning the more intricate steps of improving reed response and OB’s. A few good resources: Kinyan Polard, Richard Sleigh, and Rick Epping. That’ll get you started.

[@dirtypatwalsh]

Great advice Tim. I’ve never owned a custom harp (I have an Arkia signature in F# that was a gift but that’s not a custom). Very true about most of your tone and sound come from the player not the harmonica. I’m no great harp man but I have a few decades of gigging and recording under my belt. I don’t try to do the fancy stuff so much so yeah…stock Marine Bands and now 008k’s suit me fine. So many folks can spend a fortune on custom gear chasing the tone like you said but I think practicing is the best tone builder out there. That being said, that’s a beautiful Golden Melody and your playing is fantastic as always Tim. Great video and kudos to Sam! 😎👍

[@Tim48103]

Yep - tone is mostly "organic", as they say - the downstream stuff just modifies what your mouth does naturally, lol. and... Sam'll be famous one day, mark my words.

[@dirtypatwalsh]

@@Tim48103no doubt!😎👍

[@peteaustin5327]

Hey Tim yeah I don't do overblows so I could never justify spending that much for a harp but I totally get it why people want them. Yeah the whole thing about the choking off the reeds i had the same thing happen when i decided to spend the extra dough on a valved harp. yeah I'll never do that again. You really have to watch your breath control with stuff like that and just don't play that way.

[@landztranz]

Plywood...LOL! You may have missed your calling, Tim!

[@landztranz]

And, if I'm not mistaken, the stock harp Howard learned on is a GM, right?

[@Tim48103]

@@landztranz pretty sure both he and Carlos Del Junco play(ed) GMs, yes.

[@danieljones8639]

That thing sounds good. And I agree, it's 98% the person blowing in the holes!

[@landztranz]

That was so cool, Tim, that you played with your son! Anyway, regarding the need, or lack thereof, for a custom harp, it's a real dilemma for me because, on the one hand, as a melody guy (rather than a blues guy), I'd love to be able to play at least one of my diatonics chromatically, as in play any song I feel like playing, yet on the other hand (and that Golden Melody reminded me...), Howard Levy didn't learn to play chromatically on a custom harp. Make sense?

[@Tim48103]

totally - and I learned how to overblow on a stock harp, too. It can be done, but there's some luck in it - the stock harp you're trying to learn on has to be able to produce the overblows. Now that I know how, more or less, I also know that there are stock harps, even expensive ones, out there that you can NOT overblow without some reed work, good technique or no. You can gap the reeds properly yourself, but it becomes a bit of a chicken egg thing - to test whether you've gotten the reeds set correctly, you need to know how to OB first. There are "stock" harps like the Arkia that are set up specifically for OBs, but they're just about as expensive as customs. Anyway, again, you don't NEED a custom to learn this stuff, but if you have one, you'll probably learn it much more quickly. AAAAND.... even though I "can" overblow, I rarely do in gigs, mostly I just play the same ol' riffs I've been playing since I was 18, lol.

[@landztranz]

@@Tim48103You're so honest, Tim! LOL! Bottom line, if one wants to play diatonics chromatically, then apparently they have to be adjusted. Like, how else do Howard, Konstantin, Carlos, Jason, etc., do it (besides the hours and hours of practice, of course)?

[@Tim48103]

@@landztranz lol - the practice doesn't hurt. I took two lessons from Howard about a year ago or so, and yeah, he can do all that he does on a stock harp (or a piece of plywood, for that matter), but to make things easier on himself, he DOES tweak his harps to make those techniques easier. So, you know, if even Howard sees a benefit to adjusting the reeds, then, yeah, there's probably something to it.