TurboHarp Selector Guide

 

Need help deciding?  I understand your pain. When I was first learning to play, I must have purchased every harmonica that Hohner had made. Each time hoping, “this is the harmonica that will make me sound like [enter your favorite musician here.” The truth was, of course, that the sound I was seeking had very little to do with the instrument but a great deal with the technique. This realization was in turn the motivation of our research on the “phonetics and physiology” of harmonica playing. But that is a different story. You came here for help choosing your axe.

 

Like with most harmonica lines, it is very difficult to differentiate between one model and another. Quite honestly, there is a great deal of difference between most of the harmonicas on the market. They key differences are:

1.            Air-tightness. The opposite of “leakiness.” The perception of “air-tightness” has three components. One has to do with the actual quality of manufacturing, whereby air blown/drawn into/out of the instrument is just wasted. A second aspect of “leakiness” perceived by the player relates to the way in which the reeds have been adjusted. When the reed is in its resting position, there is naturally a physical gap between the reedplate and the reed. This is necessary for the reed to initiate its vibration. You may ask, “Why not make this gap small to minimize the air leak?” Good question. The answer is actually related to the Third aspect of leakiness, namely the players’ embouchure. This is described in the following section.

2.            Bend-ability and Over-blow-ability. You may have noticed that the note produced by most holes of the harmonica depend on the shape of your mouth: specifically the position of your tongue and jaw. Sometimes the note will flatten (or bend), sometimes it will jump up in pitch (overblow), and sometimes it will freeze or “choke.” There is a tradeoff between these three responses. Players who wish to modulate the pitch through overblow, and to a lesser extent bending, need the reeds to set low (having a small gap.) The advantage of improved modulation unfortunately increases the propensity for choking. This can be very frustrating, as you can imagine. Therefore, it takes additional practice to play a harp set up this way. One of the goals of our research and development is to find ways to improve both bend-ability and overblow-ability, while reducing the choke-ability.  As of the time of this writing, the TurboHarp AX provides the best performance in this regard.

3.            Intonation and tuning. Although you might suspect that all the notes of the scale (do-ray-me-fah-so-la-ti-do) are mathematically precise, there is actually a bit of subjectivity involved in tuning the reeds of the harmonica. This is actually a complicated topic, covered in great depth by an expert on the subject, Pat Missin. Briefly, there are trade-offs involved between playing individual notes on the harmomica versus multiple notes (chords.) Depending on your preference, the harmonica can be adjusted to sound “better” one way or the other. Most of the harmonicas from Hohner have been tuned to achieve a “compromise” between the two extremes. One exception is the Golden Melody, that is tuned to favor individual notes. (This is known as “Equal Temperment.”) A second aspect of tuning involves the reference pitch. Because some people find that the harmonica often sounds “flat” when played in accompanying other instruments, it is common to tune *all* of the reeds of the harmonica a little bit higher than the “orchestra.” This is denoted by the frequency of the reference note (which for historical reasons is the note “A.” The baseline, known as “concert pitch” is 440. For the reason above, the harmonica is typically tuned to 441 or 442. You might think that such a subtle difference would be perceivable to only the most sophisticated musician or audiophile. But this is actually an important consideration to the overall perception of “brightness” (or dull-ness) by the casual listener.

4.            Tone. When you’re shopping for a new harmonica, you will often find descriptive words like warm, smooth, bright, deep, rich, big, scent of plum with overtones of dandelion and cherry… you get the idea.  Choosing a harmonica without actually playing or even listening to it is not too different than choosing a wine without tasting it. Nevertheless, there are differences. Again, a great extent of the differences you hear between one player and another is indeed the player him/herself. As described above, the player’s embouchure affects the actual note, and to some extent overtones – hence the overall “timbre.” But the use of the hands has a great effect on the tone. (To see what I mean, you can experiment playing your harmonica into a coffee cup — a neat little trick that Howard Levy taught me.) For the same reason, the cover plates (or lids) of the harmonica affect the tone. In general, as you might intuit, lids that are partially closed sound more muffled than those that are more open. For this reason, Joe Filisko opens up the cover plates – and has been doing so for many years. In recent years, some manufacturers have been offering such cover plates. (Again, we  believe that our patented TurboLid was one of the first such open cover plates commercially available.

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5.            Appearance/aesthetics. In my (Turbodog’s) humble opinion, the main difference between many harps on the market is nothing more than their outward appearance. You may find several harmonicas with different names stamped into their covers, but having virtually the same the functional elements. In recent years, this is beginning to change, thanks to the efforts of several enthusiastic customizers, and some manufacturers. A non-exclusive list would include Joe Filisko (the “Stradivarius” of the harmonica), Rick Epping (inventor of the XB-40), Winslow Yerxa (inventor of the discrete comb), and Seydel (who recently introduced a very high-quality line of harmonicas with stainless steel reeds.) We’d like to also believe that we were one of the first innovators in the modern era, having patented several improvements to the harmonica in the early 2000’s.

Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the harmonica selector guide. The table below attempts to summarize our product offerings, both physically, and according to the descriptions above.