Slidemeister (Chromatic & related only - no Diatonic discussion) > Custom Chromatic Stuff

Farrell Combs?

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SlideMeister:
Farrell combs were getting fairly popular before Mr Farrell passed away. Heck, I bought a kit myself and had building it on my "get around to it" list for years, then ended up selling after admitting to myself that I'm probably never gunna get around to it :P :-[

I remember Blackie telling me that was all he played. In fact he had a few he was selling cuz he was convinced that they were gunna last longer than he was.

Anyway. what I remember is that the reed chambers were all the same. (no ramps at all) So. my question is (after reading Lone Harper's post) How did the Farrell combs do on the high notes? Were they better or worse?

SlimHeilpern:
I have a 270 with a Farrell comb -- it plays beautifully up high. I haven't opened it up so I can't say for sure that there aren't any ramps. But then again, for whatever reason, I've never had much of a problem with high note response, ramps or not.

- Slim

John Broecker:
I have 2 black Farrell combs on Hohner #270s. On
the 2 highest-pitched reed chambers (holes 11 and
12), the sound is faint (weak), on both harps.

That may be a reflection of my hearing impairment,
but I can usually hear all reeds, activated by me,
heard inside my body.

Best Regards

John Broecker

SlideMeister:
Yeah, we're always hearing about "ramps" this and "plugs" that, but Blackie seemed to do just fine with the Farrell combs. (I remember the one I had, had the cut-out for the external spring and every reed chamber was exactly the same. :P

I dunno. I've "handled" (but not played) few 270s with Farrell combs and thought they were actually pretty cool. 8)

The Lone Harper:
I have 2 Farrell combs, a black one for a G chromatic and a white one for a C chromatic. On both of them the top octaves play quite nicely. The only problem is that there is some obvious air leakage in the top octave of each instrument that negatively affects their response but I believe that is due entirely to leakage from the traditional 4-piece slide assembly.

Joel Anderson, the master Swedish harmonica customizer, is now milling his own chromatic combs and doesn't have ramps in them. I haven't discussed the reason why with him, but I would have expected that someone like him who works on every single aspect of a harmonica to squeeze every extra bit of performance out of it possible would have included ramps as a feature of his CNC milled chromatic combs if he thought it would have improved their performance.

Probably the best chromatic I've ever had is an SCX-16 with a standard unmodified factory-made ABS comb which, after dipping the slide assembly in a very shallow tray of water, is very loud and extremely responsive from hole 1 to hole 16 with no ramping required!

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