1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
***Hohner XB-40 Key of D Review***, June 1, 2011
This review is from: Hohner XB-40 Extreme Bending Harmonica Key of Low D
FIRST OFF, this harmonica is stamped "D" when in fact it's a LOW D. (There is no D in this model.) SECOND, this harmonica is almost unplayable as a diatonic because the mouthpiece sticks out so far. It's like they took a mouthpiece off a chromatic and stuck it on this model because they couldn't figure out any other way to handle the thickness of the body, THEREFORE you can't lip purse it. You have to use tongue blocking to get single notes which makes bending almost impossible. BENDING was the whole point of this release from Hohner. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? As some other reviewer noted here, IT'S A PROTOTYPE that doesn't work for what's it's intended to do because you can't get a lip-pursing mouth seal around the holes on the mouthpiece.
MY PARTIAL WORK-AROUND: Since I spent all my lunch money for a month on this BS contraption, I had to try to fix it or at least make it playable, instead of throwing it out the window in disgust. I unscrewed the plastic mouthpiece and got rid of it. I can now use lip pursing to blow and draw and even to bend notes down (draw), but it's still very difficult to overblow (blow) the extra 10 overblow reeds they built into this thing for that exact purpose. Send me my money back Hohner. PLEASE.
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