Schneider

Review by Stephen Schneider: Harmonica technician in Houston Texas

Rupert is more than happy to coach you through the medium of the video, and it's a high-quality production throughout. He starts by showing you the tools you can readily buy or make fairly easily. (Bear in mind that for many centuries, mechanics made their own tools, and you'll be a bit of a mechanic as you work on your harmonica.) He then makes the all-important connection between building and playing:You have to be able to evaluate. Joe Filisko and Pat Missin aren't good players? *grin* So work on your playing as you work on your reedplates; Rupert gives you some basic breathing embouchure exercises that could help you the rest of your playing career. Your playing will improve right along with your harmonicas, if you pay attention to what your harp is telling you. It's hard to build a harp that's much better then you are, which is why Filisko plays nearly as well as Levy overall and can do some things better.

Rupert's no slouch himself, providing the sountrack to his video himself and throwing in some of the cannon's technical masterpieces ("Steady," the Howard Levy classical counterpoint bit) to demonstrate his mastery of the instrument, playing with feeling and crisp execution thoughout. He's been playing the thing well for a long time, and his experience shows in his advice as well as in his playing.

Volume 1 covers fundamentals: dealing with stuck reeds (sometimes without even touching them), how to set gaps and tune reeds. It finishes with a look at the basic platform of the diatonic--how to convert nailed models to bolted construction so you can work on them more readily. It makes all the difference in the world to watch someone doing this work; for example, plinking--you can read about it, but watching Rupert plink reeds with abandon really shows you just how much handling those little devils can withstand, which should increase your self-confidence in any reedwork. Because we're afraid, aren't we, of even touching those delicate little parts after the manufacturer warned us about that. Well, fear no more

Volume 2 moves on to reed replacement, and if the thought of that scares you, you'll laugh at your own fear once you watch Rupert transfer reeds with casual aplomb. It's real, in a word--he shows a riveted replacement that goes well, then does another that doesn't quite work in order to show you Plan B: nut & bolt reed replacement. That's exactly the way it works in the real world (though I usually go directly to Plan B :-). He follows with an array of what are usually thought of as advanced customizing techniques: gasketing harps for airtightness, flattening reeds laterally to make them last longer, close gaping for overblows, quelling reed oscillation with beeswax or turbotape, reducing slot clearences by embossing, tip scooping to increase air pressure at the tip, and what I'd call "dropped-base reed arc" as another radical overblow setup. At the end he plays a couple of overblow harps set up in different ways, and you can hear the different tonal qualities--it's real.

Nowadays I am just refering people to this video instead of spending time answering their questions. Looking over Rupert's shoulder will get them in the ballpark. The video can't cover every little thing, but it does a very solid job--my criticisms felt more like nitpicking then anything serious. You have to realize that customizing is a very individual process; though customizers do similar things, how they do them--the tools, the very physical movements involved--is going to vary. Rupert shows you his way, and it's worth learning; as you progress, you may well develop your own ways of doing things, which--if they work--is an excellent indication that your becoming a real customizer yourself, able to try things and evaluate their results and adopt what works best for you. I did wish they'd been able to do nearly microscopic closeups on the reeds and slots for some techniques, but you can see enough to get you started--simply seeing the physical motion involved is a vast improvement over reading a verbal description. In the final analysis, no one else can move the metal for you; you are going to have to do it yourself and evaluate the results. You CAN do it.

The two volumes are composed as self-contained units and available separately, so Rupert reviews tools rapidly at the beginning of Volume 2. People who are already tuning/gapping/sealing their own instruments can go straight to the second volume, while beginners can begin at the beginning. I'm a fairly advanced customizer myself, and I learned plenty--at least a dozen significant things, including a couple that are now Standard Operating Procedure for me. And some of them came out of Volume 1. So for the price, roughly, of a first-rate custom diatonic, you can see how one is made, and go to work. The video tells you a lot more than the custom harp would have--custom harps pretty much just lay there, looking expensive and keeping their secrets to themselves. You have to know what you're looking at to understand that custom harp, and that's what this video is about. You'll be entertained in the process, as Rupert's the same engaging guy on camera that he is offscreen, never guilty of taking himself too seriously. Speaking of which, I have no comercial affiliation with Rupert, actually gave him money when I bought the video, and if he buys me a beer the next time I see him, well, he probably would have done it anyway. Nor does the fact that he mentions my name in it have any bearing on this positive review, given that he mispronounces it slightly. I'd give the video a solid four stars on a scale of five. It's an impressive effort for what is really the very first thing of it's kind, an A to Z customizing guide, and one that covers an enormous amount of ground in the space of two videotapes. It needed doing, and he's done it well.

Stephen Schneider
Houston, Texas