In this video, I show you how you can make your own custom color Seydel Session Steel harmonicas by buying the parts separately and assembling them. French subtitles available.
Good idea! I want to do the same :) But were the harmonicas in tune? On the Seydel website, it’s stated that the spare reed plates ‘may require fine adjustment’. The reeds of a the complete session steel do have this fine tuning (i checked it on mine, there was some sanding done on the reeds). Or did you tune them?
Hi Jan, thank you for your comment! Yes, the harmonicas were in tune. The reeds did have sanding marks (seemingly made by a small handheld rotary tool). I've also noticed file marks on Hohner reeds before, so I assume the manufacturers make each different reed with a specific size and weight, and then some fine tuning must be done by hand to get them just right or to sweeten the tuning of the whole instrument. Also, there are different temperaments and some harmonica models may be tuned ever so slightly differently to accomodate temperament preferences. For example, in the past, Hohner Marine Bands and Golden Melodies had slightly different temperaments and chords and blues playing sounded better on the Marine Band, whereas Golden Melodies sounded more pleasant for melodic playing with piano accompaniment. But I think this has changed and they are now tuned the same, although I'm not certain about this. But in the past, they were definitely tuned differently. I also assume some harmonica customizers like to sweeten factory tunings to their preferences, or to what they think sounds best. Personally, I did not mess with the factory tuning of the Seydel reedplates, as I was perfectly happy with it. When they speak of "fine adjustment", they may also refer to gapping, i. e. setting the space between each reed and its plate. Lower pitched reeds require more clearance than higher pitched ones. How much clearance depends on how hard you play and how much you plan on doing overblows. If there is too much clearance, you'll be wasting breath, and if there is too little, the reeds will not play or play with some delay if you blow hard. Also, adjusting the reeds closer to the plates makes overblows easier. I did have to do a little bit of that type of adjusting, but not much.
@@charlesdespres Thanks so much for taking the time to reply Charles! It's good to know that the reeds are pre-tuned. Knowing that, I will follow your advice for ordering the harmonicas in parts. Thanks also for the other explanations, i will used them when i have the harmonicas.
@@monsieurmarchal That sounds great! I hope you have a lot of fun doing that, just like I did. Nothing replaces experience, that's why it's always good to try things out yourself. Also, if you want to try your hand at tuning, you could always try to re-tune an old, tired harmonica that you're not afraid of destroying in the process. All you need is a small file. You'll probably find out that you can only file a reed so much... after too much filing, the reed starts sounding weird... don't ask me how I found out! :) (Oh, and by the way, I imagine (because I haven't tried it yet) that filing stainless steel reeds is different from filing regular brass reeds, as stainless steel is harder. So maybe that's why the folks at Seydel seem to use a hand-held rotary tool).
