May 9, 2025

The Harmonicaster interview with Ronnie Schreiber

Ronnie Schreiber joins me on episode 134.

Ronnie runs The Electric Harmonica Company, producing the Harmonicaster, which is an alternative to the traditional harmonica microphone, using guitar style pick-ups to create “the first practical true electric harmonica”. Ronnie first came up with the concept some thirty years ago and has been developing it in earnest over the last ten years.

Ronnie tells us the story of how he developed the idea, from the need to use steel reeds, the custom harps needed and the availability of pick-ups to use with the harmonica, and some of the harmonica players who have supported him through his journey.

We discuss the advantages of using a pick-up with the harmonica, such as having a different sound to the traditional harmonica microphone, and the feedback resistance it brings, as well as some of the challenges of using the Harmonicaster.

Links:

Harmonicaster website: https://rokemneedlearts.com/harmonicaster/wp/

The Frank Harmonica mic developed by Ronnie: https://rokemneedlearts.com/frankmic/

Harp-l post introducing the Harmonicaster: https://groups.google.com/g/harp-l/c/_ETwuJvbRRA

Brendan Power playing some Irish music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rx8kVBjAL4

The Turbo Harp: https://turboharp.com/

Dyna-mic: https://www.dyna-mic.com/

Videos:

Harmonicaster YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@harmonicaster8106

Ronnie overview of the Harmonicaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzbYxwKLPR4

Jonah Fox YouTube review of the Harmonicaster: https://rokemneedlearts.com/harmonicaster/wp/

Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
--------------------------------
Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.com

Support the show

01:40 - Ronnie runs The Electric Harmonica Company, with it’s main product being the Harmonicaster: which employs guitar style pick-ups to amplify the harmonica

01:53 - The germ of the idea for the Harmonicaster came thirty years ago

02:03 - The Electric Harmonica Company is also developing a couple of other products besides the Harmonicaster

02:28 - How Ronnie developed there idea of the Harmonicaster after posting the idea on the Harp-l mailing list

03:17 - Technician Vern Smith created some steel reeds for Ronnie to use, as steel reeds didn’t exist then. Steel reeds were needed to make an electromagnetic instrument

03:29 - Ronnie lives in the Detroit area has been involved in the automobile industry all of his working life

03:52 - Contacted Lace Music, who manufacture pick-ups, who sent Ronnie a bass pick-up to experiment with, as that was the correct size

04:36 - The lack of available steel reeds for harmonicas hampered progress for several years until Seydel came along

05:30 - Peter Madcat Ruth and Jason Ricci both provided some encouragement in the early stages

06:17 - The first version of the Harmonicaster looked like a Viewmaster slide viewer

06:27 - Brendan Power has been providing advise to Ronnie over the years including the issue of pitch problems using pick-ups with harmonica

07:08 - Will Wilde also provided some input which lead to a mark two version of the Harmonicaster

07:48 - Ronnie realised he needed to design a pick-up that could fit inside the harmonica and Lace had an alumitone pick-up that was thin enough for the task

08:48 - How guitar pick-ups work

09:49 - The magnet in the pick-up needs to be the correct strength to function with a guitar, or in the case of with a harmonica, the steel reed

10:50 - Seydel provide some of the parts for the harmonicas that work with the Harmonicaster: the reeds, reed plates and combs from their Session Steel harmonicas

11:33 - Both reed plates on the custom harmonicas use are blow plates and perhaps there is no reason for having reed plates face different directions on standard harmonicas

12:03 - The rest of the components are mainly made by Ronnie using 3D printing

12:14 - Only custom harmonicas can be used with the Harmonicaster

12:28 - Steel reeds are needed because they’re magnetic

13:34 - Emulating the loud volume of an electric guitar on the small form factor of a harmonica

14:24 - More on the balance needed on the strength of the magnet

14:36 - James Antaki, the creator of the Turbo Harp, came up with the idea of using magnets to affect the vibration of the reeds

14:51 - Most people who have heard the Harmonicaster have liked the tone

15:38 - The custom harmonicas are acoustic harmonicas, and can be played as such, but aren’t quite as loud as normal acoustic harmonicas

15:48 - The reasons they’re not quite as a loud as a standard Seydel Sessions Steel

16:19 - Pick-ups are sensitive to the sustain of the reeds of the harmonica which some people noticed as an issue. Ronnie initially addressed with noise suppression but now uses foam dampeners

17:25 - Had previously discussed pitch challenges with Brendan Power

17:57 - Harmonica players love using their microphones and Ronnie doesn’t mean to replace mics with the Harmonicaster

18:59 - Has had to separate the negative criticism from positive comments about the Harmonicaster, such as not being able to use brass reeds

19:31 - Sound using the Harmonicaster is a little different than using a mic, but is still distinctly a harmonica sound

20:33 - The sound of the Harmonicaster can be shaped using effects pedals and EQ

20:45 - Sound of the Harmonicaster brings immediacy, vibrancy and volume

21:04 - A big advantage of the Harmonicaster is that it is highly resistant to feedback

21:20 - Ronnie uses a Boss Katana amp as his test rig

22:01 - Ronnie would love to be able to generate controlled feedback via the Harmonicaster

22:21 - Thinks the real major advantage is that it has a cool tone

22:30 - Other practical advantages are the ability to use it with the many available guitar effects pedals

22:53 - In his review Jonah Fox said there is no breathe noise and it can be used as an (almost) silent practise tool

23:20 - The pick-ups are ‘microphonic’ so keeps a natural microphone tone and can play the blues on the Harmonicaster

23:53 - The form factor of the Harmonicaster: is about the size of a Sony Walkman, and is a little wider than a diatonic harmonica

24:33 - Ronnie thinks it’s easier to hold than a mic and a harmonica

24:40 - Weight with the harmonica is around 200 grams, which is less than a JT30 or Green Bullet with a harmonica

25:14 - The shape of the Harmonicaster is not round like a standard harmonica mic

25:30 - Hold the Harmonicaster housing and not the harmonica when playing it, unlike using a mic

25:44 - Fits in the hand nicely and the controls are accessible with fingers on top of Harmonicaster

26:16 - Jack socket is located on the bottom

26:34 - Can’t use hand effects but you can use a wah pedal and volume swells

27:39 - The three control switches are volume, treble and bass

27:45 - Also a bypass toggle switch on top which provides more output and is brighter on one of the settings

28:36 - Originally had two types of pick-up via the bypass switch, but they are removed now as didn’t hear a lot of difference between them

29:56 - The back of the Harmonicaster has a car grille design due to Ronnie’s Detroit car connections

30:06 - Opens up the world of guitar effects pedal possibilities

31:48 - Why you can use more effects pedals with the Harmonicaster than a harmonica mic

32:19 - Doesn’t work well with a fuzz pedal due to the raspy nature of the harmonica

32:57 - One of Ronnie’s favourite pedals is the Keeley 30MS automatic double tracker, as used by the Beatles

33:45 - Ronnie isn’t that strong a harmonica player, just like Leon Fender wasn’t that great a guitar player, and the players who have supported him are not endorsers of the Harmonicaster

34:23 - The Harmonicaster is there to provide the opportunity to discover new sounds on the harmonica

35:47 - Can use any guitar amp, and without the need to lower the gain by swapping the pre-amp tubes

36:42 - Can plug the Harmonicaster straight into a DI box

36:50 - Ronnie’s hopes are that the Harmonicaster is used by some players and customer feedback has been good

37:23 - The cost of the Harmonicaster with one harp is $325

37:35 - The cost of additional harps is $85 each

39:09 - The components which make up the cost

39:34 - Ronnie is going to use a different magnet to create more output to make the Harmonicaster louder

41:57 - The new magnet allows the Harmonicaster to have differently voiced pick-ups

42:24 - People may be able to change the pick-up themselves if they have some basic skills

44:02 - The Electric Harmonica Company is developing an anti-feedback pedal

45:40 - The Electric Harmonica Company is also developing a harmonica microphone

47:00 - Long term plans for The Electric Harmonica Company

47:42 - Sees the Harmonicaster as a boutique luthier type product, which are made to order

47:53 - The Harmonicaster can be customised because they are 3D printed

48:02 - The harmonicas are colour coded to the keys

48:46 - Can’t make The Harmonicaster any smaller

49:37 - Summary of what The Harmonicaster can bring as a ‘new tool to your tonal toolbox’, just as a guitar player has multiple options

51:33 - Ronnie welcomes all innovations which can move the harmonica forwards

51:57 - Ronnie enjoys the sharing nature of the harmonica community

52:58 - Amusing that the most famous harmonica players are generally disrespected by harmonica players, e.g. Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan

WEBVTT

00:00:00.353 --> 00:00:02.217
Ronnie Schreiber joins me on episode 134.

00:00:02.396 --> 00:00:16.056
Ronnie runs the Electric Harmonica Company, producing the Harmonicaster, which is an alternative to the traditional harmonica microphone, using guitar-style pickups to create the first practical true electric harmonica.

00:00:16.096 --> 00:00:22.504
Ronnie first came up with the concept some 30 years ago and has been developing it in earnest over the last 10 years.

00:00:23.649 --> 00:00:35.503
Ronnie tells us the story of how he developed the idea from the need to use steel reeds, the custom hearts needed, and the availability of pickups to use with the harmonica, and some of the harmonica players who have supported him through his journey.

00:00:36.645 --> 00:00:48.177
We discuss the advantages of using a pickup with the harmonica, such as having a different sound to the traditional harmonica microphone, and the feedback resistance it brings, as well as some of the challenges of using the Harmonicaster.

00:00:49.154 --> 00:00:51.698
This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas.

00:00:52.140 --> 00:01:01.460
Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas.

00:01:23.394 --> 00:01:38.334
Hello, Ronnie Schreiber, and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:38.855 --> 00:01:39.275
Well, thank you.

00:01:39.314 --> 00:01:40.216
Thank you for having me.

00:01:40.858 --> 00:01:46.004
You are the owner of the Electric Harmonica Company, which is what you're here to talk to me about today, yep?

00:01:46.484 --> 00:01:47.066
Yes, that's

00:01:47.126 --> 00:01:47.465
correct.

00:01:48.587 --> 00:01:52.713
So, I think you've been running this company, what, for the last 10 years or so?

00:01:53.218 --> 00:01:58.924
The germ of the idea started about 30 years ago, but I've been working seriously on it for about 10 years now.

00:01:59.406 --> 00:02:01.408
Since 2014, actually.

00:02:02.009 --> 00:02:10.881
So you created the Harmonicaster, which is the first practical true electric harmonica, and that's what the electric harmonica company does, yeah?

00:02:11.181 --> 00:02:18.469
There's a couple other things that I'm planning on sort of getting into right now, but yeah, that's the flagship product.

00:02:18.770 --> 00:02:20.772
I wanted to make the company name obvious.

00:02:21.506 --> 00:02:25.830
So yeah, so we'll talk about the other things that you're looking at getting into.

00:02:25.849 --> 00:02:28.431
But yeah, we'll focus on the harmonica stuff for now.

00:02:28.752 --> 00:02:31.395
About 30 years ago, I started playing harmonica.

00:02:31.754 --> 00:02:32.695
I took some lessons.

00:02:33.276 --> 00:02:38.000
Got adequate enough that I could play with actual musicians without embarrassing myself.

00:02:38.561 --> 00:02:41.242
There's a mailing list called Harp L, which still exists.

00:02:42.003 --> 00:02:46.367
And it had everybody from rank amateurs to some world-class players.

00:02:47.388 --> 00:03:05.228
And it was an interesting combination of younger blues and rock orchestras I was just wondering, has anybody ever tried to make an electric harmonica?

00:03:05.307 --> 00:03:06.409
And I said, has anybody ever?

00:03:06.449 --> 00:03:12.776
And they didn't quite say KID, but basically they said, this is how we do it, KID, with a microphone.

00:03:12.796 --> 00:03:13.437
And I said, well, I don't know.

00:03:13.602 --> 00:03:16.068
And so I thought about it.

00:03:16.087 --> 00:03:28.776
There was a guy named Vern Smith who was a technician, and he agreed to make me six steel reeds because the idea was I was going to make an electromagnetic instrument like an electric guitar only with reeds.

00:03:29.569 --> 00:03:34.354
I live in the Detroit area, so I've been around the auto industry most of my life.

00:03:35.175 --> 00:03:52.090
And so I got him some shim steel from a source and sent it to him, and he fabricated six reeds so I could test low, middle, and high frequencies, because you've got to stuff both reeds in each channel in order for it to work.

00:03:52.810 --> 00:04:03.560
And out of the blue, I contacted Lace Music that make lace pickups, lace sensors, just because they're It was an interesting technology, and I spoke to Jeff Lace, and he sort of liked the idea.

00:04:03.580 --> 00:04:11.769
I said, what do you have that's wide enough to span 75 millimeters, which is the span on most harmonicas, most diatonics?

00:04:12.430 --> 00:04:14.752
And he said, well, one of our jazz bass pickups will work.

00:04:15.013 --> 00:04:18.877
So he sent me a free pickup just to play around with it because he liked the idea.

00:04:18.896 --> 00:04:25.504
And I sort of fabricated a crude proof of concept out of some wood where I could slide the comb into it.

00:04:26.225 --> 00:04:29.208
And it was obvious that it could work, and it was loud.

00:04:29.487 --> 00:04:35.261
And I couldn't get it to feed back, so I said, well, gee, that's a feature harmonica players might like.

00:04:36.463 --> 00:04:44.420
And then I couldn't do anything for a long time because nobody made steel reeds for harmonicas, and I did just not have the resources to do it myself.

00:04:45.410 --> 00:04:58.987
And about 10, 11 years ago, I decided to pick up the harmonica again, started playing a little and reading the emails that I wasn't reading, and I found out that there was a company named Seidel in Germany that was now making stainless steel reeds.

00:05:00.069 --> 00:05:00.189
Mm-hmm.

00:05:00.322 --> 00:05:03.285
And most people think that stainless steel is not magnetic.

00:05:03.365 --> 00:05:07.189
It's just that most common grades of stainless aren't magnetic, but some are.

00:05:08.029 --> 00:05:13.716
So I contacted their American distributor, Rupert Oisler, in Asheville, North Carolina.

00:05:14.497 --> 00:05:18.161
And I said, can you find out what kind of steel we're using, you're using?

00:05:19.221 --> 00:05:20.783
And he said, it's proprietary.

00:05:20.884 --> 00:05:23.146
But he said it is magnetic, so I ordered one.

00:05:23.187 --> 00:05:29.132
And a month later, I had a more or less fully functioning, you know, proof of concept 20-note diatonic.

00:05:29.985 --> 00:05:34.593
And Peter Ruth, Mad Cat Ruth, lives in Ann Arbor, which is less than an hour away.

00:05:34.613 --> 00:05:43.189
I used to live in Ann Arbor, so I contacted him, asked him if he'd be interested in just giving my opinion about it, because I'm just not a good enough player myself to test it out.

00:05:44.029 --> 00:05:44.992
And he was encouraging.

00:05:45.211 --> 00:05:47.636
He said there were things about the tone he didn't like.

00:05:47.735 --> 00:05:50.740
He said it sounds like harmonic in a box, which it was.

00:05:50.761 --> 00:05:52.845
It had some sustain and echo.

00:05:53.538 --> 00:05:54.800
But he encouraged me.

00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:59.487
And then I think later that same year, I went to a gig where Jason Ritchie was playing.

00:05:59.526 --> 00:06:02.430
And Jason also encouraged me.

00:06:02.571 --> 00:06:06.117
You know, he had some critical things to say about it, but he said it's a cool idea.

00:06:06.156 --> 00:06:07.978
He might want to try it in the studio.

00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:09.841
And so I started working on it.

00:06:10.081 --> 00:06:16.291
And I got some components from Seidel and some pickups from Lace.

00:06:17.213 --> 00:06:22.680
And the first version, many people said, looked like a Viewmaster, one of those 3D slide viewers.

00:06:23.394 --> 00:06:25.257
You had to take the cover out.

00:06:25.516 --> 00:06:27.220
It wasn't perfectly practical.

00:06:27.240 --> 00:06:32.408
One of the people that has been advising me over the years on this is Brendan Power.

00:06:32.848 --> 00:06:33.750
Brendan's a genius.

00:06:34.230 --> 00:06:35.954
Not just a great musician.

00:06:50.146 --> 00:06:51.067
pretty cool inventor.

00:06:51.487 --> 00:06:53.048
And he's given me a couple ideas.

00:06:53.088 --> 00:07:03.000
He said, you're going to run into some pitch problems because of Helmholtz resonances, because I was using a mouthpiece, because there was a real estate conflict between your mouth and the pickups.

00:07:03.581 --> 00:07:07.985
The pickups have to be centered over the reeds, the reed tips to get the most energy.

00:07:08.026 --> 00:07:16.963
And just working with different harmonica players, Will Wild contacted me about it because he plays hard rock, high gain stuff.

00:07:17.404 --> 00:07:19.747
Very much electric guitar style riffs, so yeah.

00:07:34.182 --> 00:07:48.122
At his encouragement, I made a Mark II version, which actually exposed part of the harmonica, and he liked it, but then he said there were playability issues, which led to the final version, well, There's never going to be a final version because you do continuous improvement.

00:07:49.026 --> 00:07:53.545
I was trying to figure out a way to be able to get the whole harmonica in your mouth, basically.

00:07:53.586 --> 00:07:55.213
You have to be able to accommodate different...

00:07:55.458 --> 00:08:00.541
playing styles and some people just pucker and some people put practically swallow the thing.

00:08:00.882 --> 00:08:05.586
And I realized in order to do that I needed to have a pickup that could fit in the harmonica.

00:08:06.367 --> 00:08:14.374
I've gotten lucky a couple times and just so happened that Lace makes a series of pickups, a line of pickups called the Lumitones.

00:08:14.754 --> 00:08:17.076
They work a little differently than normal pickups do.

00:08:17.396 --> 00:08:26.084
And they made a version for cigar box guitars that was essentially just a piece of eighth inch aluminum plate that was water jet cut and had some bending on it.

00:08:26.925 --> 00:08:29.949
And I said to Jeff Lace, I said, well, can it be a sixteenth of an inch?

00:08:30.509 --> 00:08:31.951
He said, yeah, it's surface area.

00:08:31.990 --> 00:08:32.951
It's not the thickness.

00:08:33.613 --> 00:08:46.285
And so we went back and forth for about a year or two developing different profiles in aluminum until we came up with what is probably the thinnest, lightest guitar type pickup, electromagnetic pickup that's probably made in the world.

00:08:46.807 --> 00:08:48.207
The Illumitons are really cool.

00:08:48.969 --> 00:08:53.693
Most of the explanations of how guitar pickups work are actually wrong.

00:08:54.154 --> 00:08:59.419
And that's according to guys like Jeff Lace and Seymour Duncan and Lindy Frayland and Dr.

00:08:59.460 --> 00:09:03.485
Z and a bunch of other people that I've spoken to that are in the business of making pickups.

00:09:03.845 --> 00:09:16.479
You'll often see a picture with these magnetic field lines emanating from the pickup, and they'll say that the steel string disturbs the magnetic field, creating a current in the coil.

00:09:16.538 --> 00:09:17.899
That's not how it works.

00:09:18.541 --> 00:09:26.179
An electric guitar is a classic generator, a magnet moving past the coil, and what happens is the magnet magnetizes is the string.

00:09:26.658 --> 00:09:29.620
and then the string becomes a magnet moving past the coil.

00:09:30.081 --> 00:09:43.952
And I actually have a video up on YouTube where I pulled the rod magnets out of a fender pickup and just mounted a bar magnet down at the, stuck a bar magnet down on the bridge so there was magnetic continuity to the strings.

00:09:44.332 --> 00:09:48.037
And it's not as loud as a conventional pickup does, but it actually does work.

00:09:48.817 --> 00:10:04.192
So the idea is you need to magnetize the string enough so that it can create a signal in the coil or the reed, but in have such a strong magnet that it dampens the reed, affects the pitch, or even worse, it tracks it and it sticks to the magnet.

00:10:04.592 --> 00:10:06.774
There's sort of a sweet spot.

00:10:06.815 --> 00:10:10.259
There's a range of magnetic force that I needed to use.

00:10:11.840 --> 00:10:13.442
Like I said, I've gotten lucky a couple times.

00:10:13.501 --> 00:10:27.437
I can't use conventional magnets because I need a long, because harmonicas are small, the area that I need to have it located is very small, so everything is very small scale, or let's say long and skinny.

00:10:27.457 --> 00:10:33.587
So conventional magnets, ceramic or Alnico, they're too brittle to be fabricated in the size I need.

00:10:33.688 --> 00:10:44.948
Fortunately, there's what people call refrigerator magnets, flexible magnets, that I've been using until now, laser cutting, that are in that sweet spot.

00:10:45.690 --> 00:10:49.876
And so basically the trick is to magnetize the reed enough, but not too much.

00:10:50.337 --> 00:10:56.024
So you mentioned there, obviously, that you've got some, you needed to use steel reeds, which Zydle created for you.

00:10:56.044 --> 00:10:58.014
So they provide the re-plates, Ryan.

00:10:58.145 --> 00:11:05.231
A lot of people in the industry have been very gracious to me in terms of helping me with the project because I'm very small scale.

00:11:06.633 --> 00:11:12.057
Zottel supplies the actual harmonica components, meaning the reeds, reed plates, and combs.

00:11:12.578 --> 00:11:21.326
They're basically session steel components for their session steel harmonicas, but this was an idea that Brendan Power came up with.

00:11:21.645 --> 00:11:25.570
What they do is I have them, both plates use blow plates.

00:11:26.090 --> 00:11:31.508
If people take a part of harmonica, they'll know that the two reed plates are manufactured differently.

00:11:31.788 --> 00:11:44.318
The blow plates have the rivet right up against your mouth, and the tips point away from you, and the draw plates have the rivet on the distal side of the plate, and the tips point towards the player.

00:11:44.619 --> 00:11:54.447
I think the reason why they do that is that they visibly differentiate between the two reeds, otherwise they're visibly identical, and it would create manufacturing problems.

00:11:54.488 --> 00:12:02.965
So they sound identical, so basically I have them do a little bit of custom work for me, so that I can basically have the pickups where I want to have the pickups.

00:12:03.706 --> 00:12:13.952
And then the rest of the components I either make myself, I'm 3D printing a lot of stuff, the tone and control, volume and tone control I source from Asia.

00:12:14.474 --> 00:12:21.379
So just to make it clear to everybody then, is that you need to use custom harmonicas with the Harmonicaster?

00:12:21.539 --> 00:12:23.240
Yes, it's a system.

00:12:23.642 --> 00:12:26.583
Yeah, so you can't use this with your own harmonicas.

00:12:26.624 --> 00:12:28.265
You need to use custom harmonicas.

00:12:28.625 --> 00:12:34.671
So you mentioned steel reeds and you've been explaining about how magnets work with pickups.

00:12:34.750 --> 00:12:40.015
So going further into that point then, the need for steel reeds is due to that, yeah?

00:12:40.015 --> 00:12:43.605
You need the magnetism from the reeds to be able to work with a picker.

00:12:43.644 --> 00:12:43.764
Right.

00:12:43.904 --> 00:12:50.321
I mean, nickel, anything magnetic would work, but they do make now reeds out of steel.

00:12:50.977 --> 00:12:54.400
Yeah, because electric guitar strings are typically nickel,

00:12:54.480 --> 00:12:56.363
aren't they, I think?

00:12:56.383 --> 00:12:56.962
No, they're steel.

00:12:57.202 --> 00:12:58.825
They're sometimes pure nickel.

00:12:59.325 --> 00:13:01.326
Sometimes they're nickel with a steel winding.

00:13:01.366 --> 00:13:05.571
I'm a little agnostic about tone woods and tone.

00:13:06.010 --> 00:13:16.399
I think 90% of the tone of an electric instrument, like a guitar or my harmonic caster, comes from the vibrating elements, meaning the reeds or the strings and the pickup.

00:13:16.921 --> 00:13:29.293
And then the speaker on your amplifier has a major function Anything else that can contribute to the way the reed resonates or the string resonates, yeah, that'll affect the tone, but I think it's a relatively minor thing.

00:13:29.332 --> 00:13:34.298
It's mostly the sound of an electric guitar is the sound of the pickups mostly and the speaker.

00:13:35.038 --> 00:13:41.426
One thing that most harmonica players who play live will know is that electric guitars are very loud, right?

00:13:41.446 --> 00:13:45.750
They get instant sort of response, so pickups work great on electric guitars, right?

00:13:45.890 --> 00:13:58.203
And you talked about the challenges of getting that to work on the smaller form factor of a of a harmonica so what are some of the challenges around you know transferring that power of the electric guitar pickups to the harmonica

00:13:58.504 --> 00:14:23.471
well there was initially a physical constraint of actually getting a magnet that was the size that I needed that was capable of being manufactured that wouldn't break into pieces like conventional magnets so there was that and I use a laser to cut the cut because it's very difficult to cut something three millimeters wide accurately unless you have a die or you know use a laser so And I've been laser cutting them.

00:14:24.211 --> 00:14:26.014
And like I said, it's a tricky thing.

00:14:26.313 --> 00:14:30.038
The more powerful the magnet is, the more output you get out of the pickup.

00:14:30.398 --> 00:14:35.644
But if you get too far, you'll start affecting, as a matter of fact, you'll start affecting the vibration of the reed.

00:14:35.663 --> 00:14:48.177
As a matter of fact, Jim Ontake, the guy that made the Turbo Harp, I think Seidel, I think, was selling it for a while, a tunable harmonica that used little neodymium magnets to affect the way the reed was vibrating.

00:14:48.518 --> 00:14:50.559
So I don't want to do that, obviously.

00:14:50.679 --> 00:14:56.260
So You do get immediate response, and that led to addressing an issue.

00:14:56.514 --> 00:15:00.580
80% of the people that have heard it have liked the tone.

00:15:00.879 --> 00:15:02.962
That's what Mad Cat said to me the first time he heard it.

00:15:03.003 --> 00:15:10.333
He says, yeah, other people have tried it, but yeah, they just made sine wave generators and they need to do DSP to get it to sound like a harmonica again.

00:15:10.634 --> 00:15:12.376
He said, you made an electric harmonica.

00:15:12.437 --> 00:15:16.562
It still sounds like a harmonica, just like an electric guitar still sounds like a guitar.

00:15:16.743 --> 00:15:20.589
But it's got that, it sounds cliché, an electric vibrancy to

00:15:20.688 --> 00:15:23.933
it.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:15:38.177 --> 00:15:45.004
just to be clear on that point so we're calling it electric harmonica which is fine but it is an acoustic harmonica that attaches to the pickups yeah so

00:15:45.224 --> 00:16:12.956
they can be used as a conventional acoustic harmonica they're not quite as loud as a comparable session still for a couple reasons um i'm using avs plastic cover plates that are color-coded to the keys because it's a system so they mate with the with with the pickup and control housing but also i was gonna say the vast majority of people like the tone it's just that the most advanced players could hear The reeds sustain for a while, which they do in any harmonica.

00:16:13.018 --> 00:16:13.919
You just can't hear it.

00:16:14.501 --> 00:16:18.493
Even on a microphone, there's a little brief burst of sustain afterwards.

00:16:18.974 --> 00:16:22.904
And pickups, when I was doing some initial testing with the bass pickups...

00:16:23.298 --> 00:16:55.767
a pickup will actually sense sense that vibration from inches away i mean it may not be an audible signal but there is a signal there so i'm of the opinion that experienced professional musicians or people making musical instruments or amplifiers have trained ears and may be able to hear things that the general public cannot hear and one of the things they were complaining about was the sustain because they thought it was was smearing the articulation of the notes because there was still a little bit of droning going on in the background if particularly on the bigger, lower reeds.

00:16:56.226 --> 00:17:03.674
And so what I initially, I spent about two years working on an active version of it that used active noise suppression and things like that.

00:17:03.934 --> 00:17:13.905
But in the end, I'm just putting little foam dampers on the base of the reeds by the rivets, which is sufficient to dampen the tail under the vibration without affecting the pitch.

00:17:14.606 --> 00:17:24.916
So that's one of the sort of mechanical engineering challenges that there were, but so far people are happy with it, and they're been any complaints about the pitch.

00:17:25.117 --> 00:17:46.455
It's funny, because about the pitch, I mentioned Brendan Powers had warned me that on the earlier versions we're going to have pitch issues, and I said, well, nobody's complained about it yet, and then a couple people complained about it, and I asked the guy who I'd paid money, I'd hired to demo for me at a NAMM show, I said, Will says there's pitch issues, you've never mentioned it.

00:17:47.156 --> 00:17:52.080
Well, yeah, I guess there are some pitch issues, and it's, oh, okay, you wanted to work for me next year.

00:17:53.250 --> 00:18:07.874
And that's one of the challenges, because you had mentioned in our correspondence what the reaction of the harmonica community has been to it, and harmonica players are very traditional and resistant to change.

00:18:08.474 --> 00:18:12.300
They're married to their microphones, many of them refuse to use pedals.

00:18:12.961 --> 00:18:15.203
And I'm not diminishing them at all.

00:18:15.284 --> 00:18:21.410
If you've spent 20 to 30 years working on a technique with a microphone, and I love the sound of a microphone harmonica.

00:18:21.471 --> 00:18:22.711
I got microphones myself.

00:18:22.791 --> 00:18:23.211
I play it.

00:18:23.792 --> 00:18:28.217
There was Snooki Pryor or Little Walter, whoever was at first plugged in.

00:18:28.257 --> 00:18:29.699
That's a cool sound.

00:18:40.789 --> 00:18:40.829
¶¶

00:18:43.713 --> 00:18:47.939
I have nothing against it, and this is just another tool for the toolbox.

00:18:47.959 --> 00:18:56.128
It's like I like to tell people, in 1948, somebody said, Leo, it doesn't look like my Martin, it doesn't sound like my Martin, it doesn't play like my Martin.

00:18:56.148 --> 00:18:57.431
You call that thing a guitar?

00:18:58.451 --> 00:19:06.020
So I've had to sort of listen to a lot of criticism from a lot of people and try to winnow out the...

00:19:06.849 --> 00:19:09.952
actual constructive criticism from resistance to change.

00:19:10.712 --> 00:19:19.260
So, like, I'll have people say, well, can I use my, I like Hohner's, or I like Lee Oscar's, or I like this brand of harmonica, can I use one?

00:19:19.580 --> 00:19:27.607
And I'll say, well, no, to begin with, it's a system, and secondarily, those are brass, and brass won't, brass are bronze, and those won't work with magnets.

00:19:28.028 --> 00:19:29.609
And they look at me sort of confused.

00:19:31.131 --> 00:19:48.766
Well, so let's talk about some of the, you know, advantages of, you know, why people would want to use this harmonic caster the first of all you know first of all talking about the sound you've talked a little bit about that already but you know it's a bit different isn't it than the sound of using a microphone

00:20:05.442 --> 00:20:07.804
It's a little bit different, but it's still a harmonica.

00:20:08.064 --> 00:20:09.065
I mean, it's a different tone.

00:20:09.144 --> 00:20:12.127
And you can manipulate a signal from a microphone, too.

00:20:12.647 --> 00:20:19.974
But there's a lot more devices out there that are meant for modulating or manipulating the signal out of a pickup.

00:20:20.394 --> 00:20:28.842
And so if the tone doesn't particularly suit you, I'm not saying most, like I said, the vast majority of people here at the ears pick up and they say, oh, wow, that's cool.

00:20:29.383 --> 00:20:31.203
There's equal, you can EQ stuff.

00:20:31.505 --> 00:20:36.469
I mean, there's things beyond the harmonica that you can do.

00:20:37.009 --> 00:20:45.538
Most, like I said, the vast majority of people hear it, their eyebrows go up, and they go, wow, that's surprising, because it does sound kind of cool.

00:20:45.939 --> 00:20:50.443
The best analogy I can give is between an electric and acoustic guitar.

00:20:51.105 --> 00:20:59.153
It's still there, it's still the same instrument, but there's an immediacy, a vibrancy, there's some sustain, and it's loud.

00:20:59.733 --> 00:21:19.538
And that gets into one of the advantages of the harmonic caster, is that because it's based I'm not saying you can't get it to feedback, but you have to be putting it in a gain situation that you would never be playing at and stick the harmonica literally inches from the speaker in order to get it to feedback.

00:21:20.298 --> 00:21:21.079
I test things.

00:21:21.099 --> 00:21:24.943
I use a Boss Katana 100-watt amp as my main test rig.

00:21:24.963 --> 00:21:28.028
It's very convenient, it's pedal-friendly, and it's light.

00:21:28.429 --> 00:21:37.690
I can dime the amp volume gain and master all the way up on the clean and lead channels without any feedback.

00:21:37.769 --> 00:21:42.664
If I turn it all the way up to what I think is the brown sound setting, which is like really high gain...

00:21:43.105 --> 00:21:52.493
can kind of force it to feedback but under normal playing circumstances you're not going to get lost in the mix you can play as loudly as you want and it's not going to feedback

00:21:52.794 --> 00:22:01.142
yeah so that would be one of the you know the sort of number one advantage right is you don't really get feedback and like you say unless you really push it and right you can get electric guitars to feedback of course

00:22:01.301 --> 00:22:18.798
and to be honest i would love to be able to have controlled feedback on it okay it'd be it'd be a cool thing to do i've seen some guys play with a microphone deliberately feeding back you know literally sticking the mic in the amp and the audience goes crazy and every harp player in the room covers their ears because you don't do that.

00:22:19.338 --> 00:22:21.401
And the audience loves it, so what are you going to say?

00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:26.666
But I would like to believe that the major advantage is that it's got this cool tone.

00:22:26.826 --> 00:22:30.550
But in terms of practical advantages is it can't feed back.

00:22:30.631 --> 00:22:36.057
It's got other practical advantages in that you can manipulate the sound with effects.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...

00:22:43.105 --> 00:22:50.942
so

00:22:52.513 --> 00:23:00.766
I mean, another thing it does is that there's no breath noise that you get off microphones, which is quite often very prominent.

00:23:01.006 --> 00:23:02.469
I hadn't even thought about that.

00:23:02.888 --> 00:23:06.034
And Jonah Fox, who did a review of it, brought that up.

00:23:06.253 --> 00:23:08.917
He also said you can sort of use it as a silent microphone.

00:23:09.057 --> 00:23:12.083
It's not truly silent, but it's like those silent guitars.

00:23:12.383 --> 00:23:17.329
And the fact that you can play amplified and your wife won't hear the noise on the amplifier.

00:23:17.770 --> 00:23:19.933
Yeah, you can wear headphones with your amp.

00:23:20.034 --> 00:23:22.155
The pickups are a bit microphonic.

00:23:22.615 --> 00:23:29.903
You can hear when I'm jostling the unit or mounting a harmonica on there, the volume's up, you're going to hear it.

00:23:30.083 --> 00:23:33.005
Actually, that's how I basically test them, is I tap them.

00:23:33.164 --> 00:23:40.070
But that's okay, that's cool too, because it keeps that natural microphone tone as part of the overall tone.

00:23:40.652 --> 00:23:43.013
So it's different, but it's not that different.

00:23:43.054 --> 00:23:46.416
So you can play Chicago-style blues with it.

00:23:47.137 --> 00:23:50.980
It's not just a noisemaker, it's not just a device to use with pedals.

00:23:51.501 --> 00:23:53.182
You can play to blues, as they say.

00:23:53.703 --> 00:23:56.066
So let's talk about the form factor of it now.

00:23:56.126 --> 00:23:58.930
And so it's kind of rectangular shape.

00:23:59.349 --> 00:24:06.317
I like to say, if people remember how big a Sony Walkman, with the harmonica mounted on the housing, it's about the size of a Walkman.

00:24:06.637 --> 00:24:13.005
The control housing, which has the pickups and the controls and the jacks and switch, is a little bit wider.

00:24:13.025 --> 00:24:18.990
The harmonica is, I think, 104 millimeters wide, a little more than four inches, but it's about four inches wide.

00:24:19.551 --> 00:24:21.534
So the how is a little bit wider.

00:24:21.574 --> 00:24:23.816
It's, I think, 120 millimeters wide.

00:24:24.477 --> 00:24:33.066
And it's just as compact as I can possibly get it and still fit all the electronics of an electric guitar inside something that you can hold in your hand.

00:24:33.486 --> 00:24:35.387
People sometimes say, well, it looks big and bulky.

00:24:35.429 --> 00:24:39.972
It's actually easier to hold than cupping a microphone and a harmonica in the same hand.

00:24:40.453 --> 00:24:41.214
Yeah, and you've got...

00:24:41.394 --> 00:24:42.576
It's also lighter, isn't it?

00:24:42.615 --> 00:24:45.799
You've got some weights on your website around saying it's...

00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:46.760
Yeah, it weighs...

00:24:47.560 --> 00:24:49.903
With a harmonica, it weighs depending...

00:24:49.903 --> 00:24:56.830
I mean, you know, there are tolerances in the plastics and things like that, but it's in the neighborhood of 200 grams, about six ounces.

00:24:57.511 --> 00:24:59.713
That's compared to just a microphone.

00:24:59.734 --> 00:25:02.497
A green bullet weighs almost a pound by itself.

00:25:03.077 --> 00:25:10.806
Yeah, so you've got the green bullet and a marine band weighing 424 grams and a marine band with a JT30 weighing 348 grams.

00:25:10.826 --> 00:25:13.348
So it's kind of half the weight of one with a green bullet.

00:25:13.388 --> 00:25:14.329
So it's definitely light.

00:25:14.931 --> 00:25:19.855
I mean, one thing about the shape of it is, again, it isn't kind of cup-shaped like a...

00:25:19.855 --> 00:25:22.358
like a traditional microphone is.

00:25:22.459 --> 00:25:27.584
Yeah, it's not round, and so some people might think it's not ergonomic.

00:25:27.865 --> 00:25:32.388
It's just 33 millimeters tall where you hold it, because you're holding it by the housing, not by the harp.

00:25:32.449 --> 00:25:40.178
The harp is held in with very strong neodymium magnets that are either embedded in the cover plates or glued into the housing.

00:25:40.778 --> 00:25:43.441
So it's half the height of a microphone.

00:25:43.942 --> 00:26:28.579
So if you look, at least my hand, if I sort of make that sort of cup feeling where i'd be holding a harmonica it's actually sort of a rectangular shape so it does it fits nicely in the hand the all the corners all the edges are rounded i like what they call squircles um all the corners are rounded it fits in the hand very nicely ergonomically the the volume and bass and treble controls are right there by your your right fingers the uh one of the things that i i changed uh in response to to jonah fox's review is i relocated the jack from the left i I'm right-handed, so the jack on the left side didn't bother me, but Jonas holds with the left-handed grip, so now the jack comes out of the bottom of the unit.

00:26:29.185 --> 00:26:33.148
So it's a little more friendly to lefties.

00:26:33.650 --> 00:26:34.250
Yeah.

00:26:34.329 --> 00:26:38.973
And holding it is, because it's not rounded, you can't use hand effects like a traditional microphone.

00:26:39.015 --> 00:26:45.339
But, I mean, again, because it's an electric microphone, that sort of, you know, the air sort of doesn't work in the same way, right, anyway.

00:26:45.619 --> 00:26:45.799
Right.

00:26:45.880 --> 00:26:52.826
Well, that's, that was one of the first things, you know, Mad Cat is one of the world's best at hand effects.

00:26:53.406 --> 00:26:55.328
It's part of his technique.

00:26:55.548 --> 00:26:56.309
And that's what he said.

00:26:56.349 --> 00:27:02.214
He said, I can't use my hand wise and the smart-ass that I am, I said, well, that's what the wah pedal's for.

00:27:03.155 --> 00:27:03.656
That's one thing.

00:27:03.977 --> 00:27:06.058
You cannot use a wah pedal on a microphone.

00:27:06.400 --> 00:27:10.523
It's sweeping frequencies that are just going to drive the feedback crazy.

00:27:10.844 --> 00:27:20.295
You are giving up the hand-wise, but at the same time, you can do volume swells, like the Roy Buchanan Telecaster thing with his pinky.

00:27:20.734 --> 00:27:37.557
You can do volume swells, because the volume control is right there by your index finger, right at your fingertips, and you can also do tremolo with that and you can do true vibrato because the the just stick your finger over both the bass and one or the other or both and you can fiddle with the with the pitch

00:27:37.896 --> 00:27:44.626
yeah so like you say there there's this so there's three controls on the top which you can reach for your fingers when you're playing and that's volume bass and treble yeah

00:27:44.727 --> 00:27:56.451
there's also a toggle switch on top uh initially the toggle switch was to was for coil splitting i wasn't hearing that much of a tonal difference And I decided to change it.

00:27:56.912 --> 00:28:01.375
I recently made a production change where it's now bypassing the volume and tone controls.

00:28:01.455 --> 00:28:07.641
It's hot wiring the pickups directly to the amp, which gives a little bit more output and a little bit brighter thing.

00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:12.585
Because even when everything, even when the controls are fully dimed, they're still loading the pickup a little.

00:28:13.165 --> 00:28:18.309
So I actually, I got that idea from Jack White's signature Telecaster, actually.

00:28:18.911 --> 00:28:23.234
He's got a switch on there that bypasses the volume and tone controls.

00:28:23.515 --> 00:28:26.160
And that's just sort of giving it an onboard little boost.

00:28:26.240 --> 00:28:31.836
It's passive, but it's audibly louder if you're soloing or something like that.

00:28:31.856 --> 00:28:35.448
And that's also on the top, and that's right near your left hand.

00:28:36.481 --> 00:28:38.844
Yeah, and so on that switch, it also gives you...

00:28:38.864 --> 00:28:41.006
So you've got two pickup types.

00:28:41.026 --> 00:28:43.127
You've got the single coil and the humbucker pickups.

00:28:43.428 --> 00:28:44.528
That's what it was originally.

00:28:44.548 --> 00:28:45.950
Oh, that's what you've changed it for?

00:28:45.970 --> 00:28:46.671
Yeah, I've changed it.

00:28:46.750 --> 00:28:56.880
It really wasn't single coil because it's quasi-single coil, but it's more split coil and the full split coil switch.

00:28:57.220 --> 00:28:58.280
I just frankly wasn't...

00:28:58.520 --> 00:29:06.228
I may be too old to hear it, but I frankly wasn't hearing that much of a tonal difference, whereas the bypass is audible and I think is a more practical...

00:29:06.448 --> 00:29:07.750
more use for the player.

00:29:22.498 --> 00:29:24.019
Hey, what's happening, y'all?

00:29:24.038 --> 00:29:30.845
Jason Ritchie from Blue Moon Harmonicas, and I'm here to tell you that Blue Moon Harmonicas are the way.

00:29:31.306 --> 00:29:34.347
You can customize them yourself, or you can get Tom to do them.

00:29:34.648 --> 00:29:36.349
The website is a rabbit hole.

00:29:36.410 --> 00:29:56.080
We're talking about custom combs, custom cover plates, throwbacks, refurbished pre-wars, double reed plates, anything you can imagine, aluminum, ABS, plastic, phenolic resin, wood, any kind of comb you want, any kind of covered Tom Halcheck's your man he's got you

00:29:56.673 --> 00:30:01.498
And also in terms of appearance, I'm a Detroiter and I've got a side gig writing about cars.

00:30:01.518 --> 00:30:02.858
There's a grill on the front of it.

00:30:03.880 --> 00:30:06.142
Yeah, a nice car grill on there, yeah.

00:30:06.863 --> 00:30:14.348
You talk about, obviously, you know, the big advantage, one thing you might lose is hand effects, but it opens up a whole new world of pedals, right?

00:30:14.388 --> 00:30:19.032
Because pedals used with a harmonica microphone generally have to be sort of custom-made pedals.

00:30:19.053 --> 00:30:31.209
You can use a few of those reverbs and delays which aren't custom-made for harmonicas, but generally you can't use the whole plethora of guitar pedals but this is pretty much open to well a vast majority of those

00:30:31.348 --> 00:30:45.169
I would say the I can't say all because there are modulation pedals that are designed around the shape of a picked guitar note I'm a deadhead, so of course I have envelope filters here.

00:30:45.528 --> 00:30:48.211
And some envelope filters, it doesn't trigger.

00:30:48.932 --> 00:30:50.634
Others, they sound cool, really cool.

00:30:50.654 --> 00:30:54.419
I mean, yeah, you can sound like Jerry on your harmonica if you want to.

00:30:54.439 --> 00:31:01.866
So with some of the modulation pedals that are tracking the signal and are really meant around guitars, I would say no.

00:31:01.926 --> 00:31:05.830
But the vast majority of pedals, certainly any kind of gain, distortion...

00:31:13.761 --> 00:31:24.101
Most,

00:31:24.121 --> 00:31:31.333
the vast majority of pedals will, you know, it's compatible with it, because basically, electronically, it's an electric guitar.

00:31:31.778 --> 00:31:41.797
Yeah, so, I mean, just to explain that further then, so, you know, what is it about using the harmonica cast of microphone that, you know, that means you can use the pedals over a conventional harmonica?

00:31:41.817 --> 00:31:44.663
Okay, well, it's, number one, it's not a microphone, it's pickups.

00:31:44.923 --> 00:31:45.063
No.

00:31:45.544 --> 00:31:45.825
I know.

00:31:45.865 --> 00:31:46.686
It's a pickup,

00:31:46.707 --> 00:31:48.509
yeah.

00:31:48.705 --> 00:31:54.851
To begin with, microphones can have impedance matching issues, and same thing with whether pedals are amplifiers.

00:31:55.291 --> 00:32:01.176
You know, that can be solved with just a matching transformer, but not every pedal will work with every microphone.

00:32:01.616 --> 00:32:18.612
And in some cases, when they're doing some of the modulation, in the case of a wah pedal or some of the, you know, like the Freak Out or some of the Pitch Shifters or things like that, you might run into a situation when using that with a microphone that it's just going to create feedback and stuff like that.

00:32:18.672 --> 00:32:21.882
One pedal that I don't like using it with is fuzz.

00:32:22.544 --> 00:32:23.728
You have to be really...

00:32:23.768 --> 00:32:25.874
It's like pepper and food, you know?

00:32:25.933 --> 00:32:26.596
It's just a...

00:32:27.157 --> 00:32:29.484
Because the harmonica is very raspy to begin with.

00:32:30.561 --> 00:32:37.448
That's, I think, one of the reasons why people, no pun intended, resonate with the harmonica is it's very human voice-like.

00:32:37.508 --> 00:32:43.292
The way the reed creates the sound is very much similar to the way our vocal cords create that sound.

00:32:43.573 --> 00:32:48.958
And there's a little bit of a rasp to the harmonica sound, and it's already got that fuzz there.

00:32:48.978 --> 00:32:50.439
I've already been into it.

00:32:50.499 --> 00:32:56.625
But other than that, I have literally a closet full of different pedals that I like trying with it.

00:32:57.365 --> 00:33:02.450
One of my favorites is Robert Keeley makes a what's it called, the MS-30 or something.

00:33:02.509 --> 00:33:05.973
It's based on the Beatles' Abbey Road vocal doubling.

00:33:06.575 --> 00:33:19.871
If the player's ears are open enough to be willing to explore pedals, that opens up just a whole world of tone possibilities and sound possibilities that aren't there.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:33:36.450 --> 00:33:44.997
But an overdrive pedal is a good example, right, where you're getting, obviously, an overdriven sound out of an electric guitar that you couldn't get through a harmonica microphone because you'd just be getting feedback straight away.

00:33:45.178 --> 00:33:50.781
And one of the problems I personally have is I'm just, like I mentioned, Leo Fender maybe could play some cowboy chords.

00:33:50.842 --> 00:33:55.987
Lawrence Hammond was so profoundly tone-deaf he was described as a musical.

00:33:56.326 --> 00:33:59.450
All of his early employees were musicians because he needed their airs.

00:33:59.849 --> 00:34:06.415
And I've had to rely on a lot of players, both here in the area and internationally, who have been great.

00:34:06.415 --> 00:34:09.123
with their time and advice.

00:34:09.244 --> 00:34:17.306
And I want to make it clear that any of the Harmonica players I have mentioned, here's the official disclaimer, are not endorses or endorsers.

00:34:17.668 --> 00:34:23.400
They've just been gracious with their time and been cool about helping to move the technology forward.

00:34:24.282 --> 00:34:32.228
I think there's a line on your website where it says that the harmonic cast is there for people to explore and make new sounds, right?

00:34:32.369 --> 00:34:37.313
Sort of like Hendrix on the guitar, no one knew that he was going to make the sounds he did out of the electric guitar,

00:34:37.393 --> 00:34:37.432
so...

00:34:37.452 --> 00:34:43.157
Rickenbacker and Leo and Bixby and all those early guys that worked in Les Paul, they couldn't anticipate stuff.

00:34:43.177 --> 00:34:45.960
It says in the Ethics of the Fathers, who is wise?

00:34:46.181 --> 00:34:48.583
He who sees the end of a thing from its birth.

00:34:49.463 --> 00:34:51.244
You know, who Who can tell?

00:34:51.264 --> 00:34:53.266
I can't tell what people can do with it.

00:34:53.327 --> 00:34:54.688
It's just I want to put it out there.

00:34:55.570 --> 00:35:03.898
While I was working on the active version, the noise circuit that I was using was from ISP Technologies, the decimator pedal.

00:35:04.398 --> 00:35:09.324
They're local here in the Detroit area, and Buck Wilder's one of the world's experts at noise suppression.

00:35:09.605 --> 00:35:16.112
And so I asked him once, I said, it's kind of cool when a great musician uses your stuff, isn't it?

00:35:16.391 --> 00:35:25.702
And he told me a really cool story how they were putting on a showcasing at one of the NAMs or something, where Steve Lukather and Alan Holdsworth were playing for them.

00:35:26.222 --> 00:35:36.172
And it was a private event, and some guy carrying a guitar comes to the door, and the woman with the list isn't having any of it, and she's just not letting him in, you know.

00:35:36.474 --> 00:35:39.277
And he says, no, no, no, Alan's a mate of mine.

00:35:39.356 --> 00:35:40.458
No, these are friends of mine.

00:35:40.557 --> 00:35:46.284
And Don Lace walked up to explain to the woman, yes, you could let Jeff back into our event.

00:35:47.385 --> 00:36:00.786
So going back to what the sounds you can make out of it, is obviously you talked about effects pedals and there's a whole world of effects pedals which we can we can try but the other interesting thing is that you can use guitar amplifiers you know non-modified guitar amplifiers so

00:36:01.065 --> 00:36:08.117
right if you want to try play through a marshall stack or a dual rectifier or something like that turn it up

00:36:08.545 --> 00:36:22.518
Yeah, so what typically happens with harmonica amplifiers is that when you use an amplifier with a harmonica, you can use guitar amplifiers, but generally if you do, you have to change the tube so you're turning down the gain so you're not getting the feedback.

00:36:22.577 --> 00:36:30.724
And then often you have the amplifiers modified so they're a bit more friendly with the harmonica as well on the feedback.

00:36:30.744 --> 00:36:36.871
So you really have the opportunity to use the kind of screaming high gain sort of amplifiers that are available for guitars.

00:36:37.090 --> 00:36:40.978
You don't have to worry if you're showing up at a gig, whatever the back line is, too.

00:36:41.177 --> 00:36:44.606
I mean, you know, you can use a DI box if you want to just go right to the board.

00:36:44.646 --> 00:36:52.005
Anything that'll work with a guitar in terms of DI stuff will work with this, so I'm not looking to get rich off of this.

00:36:52.802 --> 00:36:54.603
To begin with, I'm 70 years old.

00:36:56.184 --> 00:36:58.666
And it is slowly becoming accepted.

00:36:58.967 --> 00:36:59.967
I've sold a few of them.

00:37:00.528 --> 00:37:03.831
I haven't gotten any negative feedback from any of the customers yet.

00:37:03.911 --> 00:37:07.934
What feedback I've gotten from them has been glowing, and we want to buy more harps.

00:37:08.516 --> 00:37:15.302
Which, considering that the additional harmonicas are not inexpensive, is a bit of an endorsement from at least the customers.

00:37:16.262 --> 00:37:18.224
You know, I've sold a few full sets.

00:37:18.704 --> 00:37:19.545
You want to buy 12?

00:37:19.605 --> 00:37:20.626
I'll sell you 12.

00:37:20.865 --> 00:37:27.451
The additional, just address The basic system is$325 and it comes with one A-harp.

00:37:28.295 --> 00:37:34.581
I figure that's the most common one that Yeah, I know if you buy a set, it comes with a C, but no, we play an A harp.

00:37:35.601 --> 00:37:37.704
And each additional harmonica is$85.

00:37:37.844 --> 00:37:40.367
I would like to charge less than that.

00:37:40.867 --> 00:37:51.556
It's okay, it's fair for a premium harmonica, and there are specialty harmonicas that are up into the$140,$150 range for some of the diatonics.

00:37:52.077 --> 00:37:58.362
But Ziddle charges me what they charge me, and I really don't have much of a margin on the additional ones.

00:37:58.621 --> 00:38:00.324
But that's the cost of being a small...

00:38:00.463 --> 00:38:01.385
small businesses.

00:38:01.625 --> 00:38:07.731
Yeah, I think, you know, talking about the price,$325 for the Harmonicaster and an A-harp is not bad.

00:38:07.791 --> 00:38:10.815
I mean, you know, a premium microphone, you could easily pay more than that.

00:38:11.135 --> 00:38:17.621
And if it's a custom mic that's turned out of some burled wood or something, you're going to pay$300,$400,$500 for a custom

00:38:17.762 --> 00:38:17.882
mic.

00:38:18.302 --> 00:38:26.130
Yeah, so that price, and like you say, you know, another harp,$85, so, you know, maybe buy a two or three, so you've got four or five maybe at

00:38:26.371 --> 00:38:26.851
the most.

00:38:26.911 --> 00:39:02.510
It annoys me that I can buy, my brother lives in Jerusalem and and he needed a local radiologist that he knew here in detroit to look over some cat scans of his and the radiologist was nervous about viruses so he wouldn't take it on a thumb drive and the easiest fastest most convenient i didn't want to pull the one off my laptop off of my my laser and stuff so i went to micro center and for eighty dollars i bought a laptop with windows 10 on it doesn't have a whole lot of memory on it but it's fine for a tiny little laptop and i'm looking at this thing and i'm thinking they're selling all that technology for and I got to charge$325 for them.

00:39:02.630 --> 00:39:06.474
And if I was a larger company and I could buy...

00:39:06.494 --> 00:39:08.536
Now, there's a limit.

00:39:09.077 --> 00:39:12.380
You know, the harmonica components are going to come from Germany.

00:39:12.440 --> 00:39:13.362
They're not going to be cheap.

00:39:13.561 --> 00:39:17.606
The pickups are made, completely made in the United States other than maybe the magnets.

00:39:18.166 --> 00:39:23.612
The supply chain on the pickup starts in Reno, Nevada where they're laser cut out of aluminum.

00:39:23.652 --> 00:39:24.673
Then they send them to me.

00:39:25.114 --> 00:39:30.019
I do some metal shaping and then I glue in the magnets and then I send them out to California where lace adds their...

00:39:30.320 --> 00:39:34.326

The Harmonicaster interview with Ronnie Schreiber

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