Tuner

[Ibershoff]

I've been having fun tuning reeds that for one reason or another have gone
out of tune. I've been tuning the harps by ear while striking the proper
note on my keyboard. Question: does any one have experience tuning reeds
with electronic tuners? If so which do you consider to be the best at
getting the job done. I've been looking at the Korg CA-1. Not expensive and
Korg claims this unit will do the job nicely. Any help or comments are
appreciated. Thanks D.I.

[D***@DeerInTheTraffic.com]

I do all my own set-up and intonation
(harp AND guitar).

I have retuned several harps and made a Gypsy-Minor scale harmonica out of a
cheap C-major harp.

Here's what I've found:

Out of the box,
diatonic harmonicas will have their Root Note tuned to absolute pitch
and the rest of the notes tuned to suit the key the harp is in
(and your ear may be a better guide than a needle).

You CAN retune a diatonic harp for Equal Temperament.
It makes sense if you're going to, for example, use a C harp to play in G,
Dm, Am, Em etc.

Chromatic harmonicas should be tuned in Equal Temperament,
so a chromatic tuner is ideal...


I have had 3 chromatic tuners.

The best is the Boss TU-12h.
It's fast to lock-on to a note and has an actual analogue needle meter.
When it broke (under the wheels of a van), it was too expensive to replace,
so I bought...

A Boss TU-80.
The cheapest chromatic tuner that I could find at the time.
This is actually cheaper in the shops now than when I bought it!
It has a built-in metronome and can output a thin, reedy tone if you still
want to tune by ear.
It's slower in locking on to the note than the TU-12H.
The display is an LCD panel with twin LEDs to tell you if you're flat,
sharp or dead-on.
It's fairly useless under low lighting, so I bought...

A Korg DT-7.
It has a bright LED display (visible at my feet in the dark)
with a fairly good sensitivity.

In the range that we're interested in (+/- 10 cents of the note)
the centre green LED indicates dead-on tuning with one of
the red LEDs either side dimly lit if you're "nearly there".

Whatever you use...
Beware of accidentally bending the note you're trying to tune.
It's happened to me and I've had to remove material from
BOTH ends of the reed to get to where I wanted
(hardly ideal for tone or long life).

[Spider]

Post by D***@DeerInTheTraffic.com
Whatever you use...
Beware of accidentally bending the note you're trying to tune.
It's happened to me and I've had to remove material from
BOTH ends of the reed to get to where I wanted
(hardly ideal for tone or long life).

the lightest breath possible should be used while tunning your harmonica
to avoid this very thing.

cheap harmonicas a great for trying out diffrent tunnings
and fine that sand paper works well for tunning.