Here's local harmonica player Wayne Riley (http://www.rileyandrileyblues.com/bio...) flattening the draw reed plate on a stock Manji harmonica.

Flattening the draw reed plate is the easiest thing you can do to get a dramatic increase in performance.

This kit is for those who like to spend ten minutes or less per harmonica on gapping, tuning and other adjustments.

You don't need to be a customizing whiz! These are the tools you need to get the essential things done and keep you playing.

Get the kit here

This kit provides what you need to work on harps anywhere.
Use this kit to:
-Adjust reed shape and gap
-Fix tuning troubles without having to take apart your harp!
-Fix Reed Centering
-Replace lost screws

Includes:
-Solid brass reed shaping tool
-Five Cent Tuning Tool™
-Multi-purpose Reed Wrench/Tuner/Support Tool and Plinker
-Small assortment of harmonica screws

Here are a few thoughts on overblows and harmonicas. These ideas are relevant to both setting up and playing overblows on the diatonic harmonica.

- Overblows, overdraws, overbends are just like regular bends. The same thing that causes a regular note to bend causes the note to overbend.

- Air flow makes the reeds move and resonance affects the frequency (pitch). This is basic to how the harmonica works.

- Resonance can make a reed stand still. Resonance is kinetic energy and it can greatly affect the frequency of a reed.

- Resonance has a strong effect on both reeds when regular bends are played. Regular bends are double reed bends and overblows are single reed bends - they have a different behavior and sound.

- Resonance has a weaker effect on the closing reed than the opening reed during an overblow. If you can't hold and overblow note, it's likely because the reed that's supposed to stand still is not standing still.

- There are several kinds of overblow. Which is your favorite?

- It’s technique, but it’s also the harp. You need technique to play overbends but you also need a harp that will respond to your playing.

A harp player bought one of my combs from Rockin Ron's and had a little trouble getting the harp to play well. Here's why!

Just like maybe one-in-ten harps plays really well from the factory, this one suffered from defect and was the worst of the bunch.

It's fixed, now.

This particular harmonica is a Delta Frost but these defects happen with EVERY brand of harp. There are no exceptions. The only harmonica free of defects is a proper custom harmonica.

My combs are here:
https://harp.andrewzajac.ca/Combs

My tools are here:
https://harp.andrewzajac.ca/Tools

USA harpists, find my products at Rockin Ron's:
http://rockinronsmusicsd.com

There are only two or three ways to change the shape or curvature of a reed. There are several ways to perform each of them and of course you can combine them in a million ways.

Here's a reference to doing reed work. It's a PDF file you can download for free! Click the image to download...

REAL-LIFE DEMONSTRATION:

(The black arrows indicate pressure applied with a tool and the pink round spots indicate counter-pressure applied with your finger.)

Curve the tip down:

Curve the tip up:

Lower base of reed:

This is a description of how I get the proper view of the shape of the reeds:

This is part of a series about tuning the diatonic harmonica

Part 1 - Tune a harmonica using your ears and a simple chromatic tuner
Part 2 - More Better - ultra precision tuning
Part 3 - Perfect Pitch: Using breath dynamics for tuning
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Can you have too much of a good thing? Probably.

Can a harp be in absolute perfect tune? Maybe. If you don't care all that much about harmonica tuning (as long as your harp doesn't sound too bad), you can stop reading this and go back to playing some mean harp or practicing scales.

You can find a straightforward method of tuning a diatonic harmonica here: Tune a harmonica using your ears and a simple chromatic tuner. That will get your harp sounding very nicely.

If you obsess about tuning and are willing to spend a considerable amount of time and effort to get it perfect, read on!

In summary, we will apply the same strategy we've used to get the octaves in tune to the fifths and thirds.

Here's an important fact: You need to tune every Fifth with as much accuracy as you can.

What's so special about the fifths?

Every note of the scale has a purpose. For example, the Thirds and the Sevenths give the scale it's general sense of being (major, minor, dominant...). Fifths imply the Tonic; they are closely related to the tonic. It's important to get the tuning of the fifth (and fourth - same thing) right to make the chord sound nice.

Since the tonic and fifth are so closely related, the margin of error is considerably tight. A very small adjustment can go a long way. Often a fifths is tuned to less than 2 cents from ET, so even if you like your harps tuned to ET, you should be able to get away with such a small offset - you get the best of both worlds.

No chromatic tuner will be of help - you need to use your ears for adjustments this precise.

There are a lot of fifths on the standard diatonic harp. Every arrow in this picture is an interval of a fifth. If you enjoy tuning, dig in!

I can't tongue-block these intervals without affecting my embouchure which will cause some bending of these notes. That's not helpful to precise tuning! To play these intervals with a natural embouchure, you can isolate these pairs of reeds with the cover plates off using one finger to mute the thirds.

There are two chords on the draw plate so there are two different Fifths! The 2 draw is the tonic of the 1-2-3-4-5 draw chord. But the 4 draw is the tonic to the 4-5-6 minor chord. So 2-4 draw is an interval of a fifth, but so is 4-6 draw. These notes are repeated up the harp so 6-8 is a fifth, too.

Waitaminute! 6-8 is a fourth! Yes, but 8-6 is a fifth!. Take a minute to think about that...

...

And 8-10 is a fifth.

So tune the fifths with your tuner and then fine tune them with your ears. Play the tonic and the fifth and eliminate beating in the same way you eliminate beating when you tune octaves (using variable breath force to figure out which way to adjust the notes. See here: Tune a harmonica using your ears and a simple chromatic tuner. These beats are a little harder to hear than straight octaves, but they are there.

Thirds anyone?

Now that you have tuned all the fifths to perfection, can you use the same process with the thirds? Sure. Play the tonic and third together and fine-tune it to eliminate beats.

On the draw plate, there are two chords so there are two thirds. The 3 and 7 draw are major thirds to the 2 draw. The 5 and 9 draw are minor thirds to the 4 and 8 draw. Since major thirds need to be tuned about 12 cents flat to be just, you can compromise and find a nice sounding spot in between equal (0) and just (-12). Minor thirds are just at +16 but they sound pretty good near zero.

Remember the 5 draw is also the flat seventh of the 2 draw as well as the minor third of the 4 draw. What sounds good for one may not sound so good for the other. You decide what's best...

This is an extended French TunerTuner™. They are not part of my tool kit but are available separately.

What does it do? It helps tune the Fifths, Thirds as well as the Octaves on the blow plate.
The extended French Tuner works just like the regular FT. It plays octaves on one side and plays the other intervals on the other side.

Octaves:

Fifths:

You don't need any fancy equipment to tune properly. Even the French tuner/extended FT is just a tool to speed up the process. Use your ears. I'm posting these images to offer you a further visual example of what reeds to tune as pairs.

Some points to remember about tuning intervals relative to the tonic:

- If you play both the Tonic and the Fifth, a chromatic tuner will indicate the tonic - even if the tonic is the higher note (example, 3-4 blow or 6-8 draw.)
- Use your ears just like when tuning perfect octaves.
- If you hear beating that disappears when you increase your breath force, the bottom reed is tuned higher than the top reed (again, even if the bottom reed is the fifth)

Happy tuning!

Rockin Ron told me that he gets quite a few technical support questions about replacement reed plates. The harmonica looks like a simple instrument but once you have taken it apart for the first time, you realize how important all the little details can be!

Here's a video about the basics of installing new reed plates into your favorite harp: