In the 125 years since 1896, when the iconic Hohner Marine Band set the format for all 10-hole diatonic harmonicas in Richter tuning, nothing substantial has changed. All modern harps have exactly the same construction: a central comb with a blow reedplate on top, draw reedplate on bottom, and two coverplates. But with the proliferation of knowledge, aided by the internet, clever people everywhere are coming up with striking new improvements for long established products. In the case of the classic 10-hole Richter harmonica (often known as the blues harp), the most significant, in my opinion, is an invention from Hungarian engineer/designer Zombor Kovacs. Roughly 15 years ago, Zombor created a prototype harp where the lower draw reedplate can move from side to side by the distance of one chamber. This creates new pairings between the blow and draw reeds, which has a huge beneficial effect on the expressive power of the harp. Interactive reed bending is a massive part of the sound and appeal of the blues harp – but only 8 of the 20 reeds can be bent in pitch. In one fell swoop, Zombor’s invention doubles that number to 16! In addition, it increases the range of the existing bendable notes by a large amount. That’s a BIG improvement on the 1896 design without losing any of its intrinsic qualities - because in the home (un-shifted) position, the SlipSlider plays exactly the same as a stock Richter harp.
WHY THE SLIPSLIDER IS A GAME-CHANGER FOR THE RICHTER DIATONIC HARMONICA Brendan Power Patron
With Zombor’s blessing, a few years ago I developed his idea further using magnets, to simplify the construction and make it more user-friendly. I called my iteration the SlipSlider, and made it available as a hand-made custom harmonica. It works well, adding a huge amount of juicy new expression to the standard Blues Harp. Some love it, but others are very disconcerted when one of the reedplates in their trusty ol’ harpoon is suddenly capable of movement. “The notes are all different!” they say. Ah, yes… well, actually, that’s the idea! But what’s really happening in the SlipSlider is not weird at all. In fact, it makes playing a lot EASIER than on a standard Richter harp. That’s because the drawplate movement is simply moving familiar note patterns to other places on the instrument. There is no new tuning to learn; all you need to do is play your familiar licks and patterns in a different area of the harp – it’s that easy!
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The magazine for HarmonicaUK
