10 harmonica harmonica 11 - brendan power harmonica · feb/march 2014 harmonica world 11 his name...

HARMONICA WORLD 11Feb/March 2014

His name is Christian Sandera,

and here is his story in his ownwords:

At 1987 I started to play with thecountry band "Johnny and theCredit Cards" western swing. Theproblem was that I could not playall these melodies cause of themissing tones.

So approximately at 1989/90 I triedto fix the problem and started theproject. A lot of work, cause therewere no material or harps theywere built in these way.

I bought a lot of harps of differentmodels and find out that the"Marine Band Full Concerto" has acomplete harp on one side. That'swhat I need, ‘cause at this time Iwas not able to make my own

customized reedplates.

Of the other side of my specialcomb I placed the missing reeds Ineeded.

On the first hole I wanted to havethe possibility to play a full stepand I wanted also to bend the fifthdraw note, a little different to yourmodels. So I created a specialseparation, made slits and valvedit, ‘cause there are now two reedswith the same response.

After hell of work and thoughtsI've got my chromatical harp and itworked very good.

Unfortunately nobody in Austriaand also Hohner were interestedto help me or they didn'tunderstand what I wanted, so Itried to be better on the normalmodels and didn't continue mywork on the special harp.

The photos I sent you (opposite)probably will say more about theidea and the realization.

My first working x-reed prototypemade in New Zealand dates backto 1989, so it turns out Christianand I were developing the sameidea at the same time on oppositesides of the world withoutrealising it.

Neither of us knew that WillScarlett had got there first inCalifornia about 8 years earlier!

It's a funny old world…

www.brendan-power.com

Extra-Reed Harmonicas: AnotherPioneer Discovered:by Brendan Power

Last year I devoted a few articlesin this magazine to uncovering thefascinating history of the Extra-Reed Concept for harmonicas. Incase you are still wondering whatthat means, it involves addingextra passive reeds in theresonance chamber to give moreinteractive-reed bendingpossibilities. The extra reeds (orx-reeds for short), make theharmonica much more expressive,and capable of chromatic playingthrough simple blow and drawbending alone.

It was a complicated story already,dating back to about 1980. As faras I knew there were two peoplewho thought of the concept andmade working prototypesindependently (Will Scarlett andmyself), and a significant thirdperson who was shown the basicidea (by Will) but then developed itextensively on his own (RickEpping). Unfortunately Will andRick fell out badly over it at thetime. I gave them the opportunityto tell their own sides of the storyin separate Harmonica Worldarticles, and it made absorbingreading. I told my history with theidea as well; if you want to followthis up, the three strands arewoven together on my website inthe Geek Zone section under thelink: World's First Working 30Reed 10 Hole Harp -1989.

It should be noted that Pat Missin

10 HARMONICA WORLD Feb/March 2014

and Richard Sleigh also dabbledwith the x-reed idea in the 1980s,but didn't feel they had madeenough progress with it to besignificant.

Now, out of the blue, it appearsthere was another x-reed inventorno one ever heard about before! Iwas doing a show in Budapest lastmonth, and a fan who'd driven allthe way from Austria showed mesomething that made my jaw drop:a home-made x-reed harmonicadating back to 1989. It looks like aprecursor of the Hohner XB-40:

Here are the internalcomponents. The comb slots arefor valves: