Customer Reviews

Make Your Harmonica Work Better

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Poor instruments was the major impediment to my ability to play harmonica. This book taught me how to turn a bad instrument into a great instrument and my skills as a musician have jumped ahead. This is a great book by a master of the subject. The book has two sections. One section for simple and easy things to do to improve the chromatic harmonica. These require only basic tools and experience. I've used almost all of Doug's simple modifications and they make an enormous difference. The other half of the book takes you deep into the jungle of customisation and is very complex but explained carefully and thoughtfully. The second half of the book will keep my busy for years and years. This is the most comprehensive book I've seen on maintenance and customisation of chromatic harmonicas.

Doug is a well known and respected expert on harmonica improvements and customisation and construction. He has made and customised harmonicas for Larry Adler (who writes a forward for this book) and is frequently providing internet newsgroups with his excellent advice. A perfect companion to this book is Doug's other book "Play the harmoinca well" which teaches you how to play the harmonica - once you've used THIS book to make the instrument work properly! ;-)

I got this book because a couple of my harmonicas weren't working all that well, and I thought the book would help me get them back into shape. Much of the information here is available on the Net for free, and repairing and tuning a harmonica is like trying to write the Bible on a grain of rice. It can be done, but it's extremly difficult and time consuming.

If you have a lot more time than money, this book "might" help you out. However, while you may be able to fix your car, build a deck, and even perform brain surgery, you'll soon find that repairing and tuning a harmonica is not as easy as this book makes it appear, regardless of how much patience you have.

I give it three stars because it's informative, but those harmonicas I wanted to fix still aren't, and I'm usually very good at stuff like this.

Although it's not at all clear from the title or description, most of this book is about the cleaning and customization of chromatic harminicas- the fancy ones with the slide- and not the simple diatonic harps that most people play. Some of the information is useful to diatonioc players, but most is not.

The chromatic info is useful, but of somewhat uneven quality and style. Tuning- one of the most useful mods a player can do- is covered in a very superficial manner. Some of the mods, like reshaping the internal channels in the comb, are discussed at length without a lot of explanation was to why one mught want to bother. And many mods are presented with only the barest oif details- certainly not enough to insure that the tyro doesn't desctroy an expensive harmonica while learning how.

As one reviewer has noted, far more information is out there on the web awaiting only a quick Google search. I'd do that before I considered buying this book.

This book provides several trade secrets that are hard to find. Although some what dated it still applies today. If you have the bench skills required you can service your own harps and save a ton of money. The book is very helpful.

Product description claims: "vast amount of [harmonica] knowledge throughout the world ..., but little of it is written down." Pshaw!

Not an informed opinion, and not a responsible or quantifiable statement.

Many Harmonica scholars have published histories, and techniques for playing. Worldwide email lists are active, and annual conventions are common. Robert Hale, DUKEofWAIL (dot) com