By Dave Payne Sr.
Rupert Oyslers video will have you scrounging around in junk drawers, behind your desk, and in any nook and cranny in your home that might contain some dusty, lond-ago-discarded harmonica.
If knowledge is power, Oysler must be a powerful man.
There ar two videos. Video No. 1 deals with Oysler's arsenal of homemade and makeshift tools, fixing stuck reeds, playing techniques to make the harp last longer, getting rid of Golden Melody and Marine Brand nails and replacing them with screws, gapping tuning and some other things I'm sure I've forgotten.
No. 2 deals with reed replacement(the holy grail of harp-life extension), ways to stop squealing, embossing, tip scooping, radical reed reshaping that is a bit too radical for me and a bonus feature on chromatic repair. My windsavers appreciate that one.
Oysler plays his harps throughout and the opening scene is an interesting look at how the harmonica looks inside as it plays. Oysler is one heck of a good player by the way and, in my opinion, his style is about as unique as his name. Incidently, he's been playing about as long as my parents have been alive.
It's easy to follow what he is doing. Thanks to the numerous closeups, the repair procedures are easy to see and I certainly hope the injury to his right thumbnail has healed. I'd be interested to know how he smashed it.
The tools he makes are as remarkably effective as they are crude-looking. With one of his tool I made out of an old Marine Band reedplate(mine looks better than his, I made a little mahogony handle for it) I can adjust the gap of a reed without taking the covers off. That my friends, is power. When a reed seizes now, I merely laugh at it.
These videos are good not only for the wallet, but for the instrument itself.
Fatigued reed on your harp? In the B.O. days (Before Oysler) you would toss it. However, if your mandolin bridge became cracked or a fret on your guitar became worn, you would have had those instruments fixed.
But the mandolin and guitar are real instruments, right? Harmonicas are disposable, aren't they?
Oyslers's videos are a kick-in-the-teeth for that assumption.
Oysler isn't working on out-of-the-box harps on the videos, he is perpetually maintining the ancient harmonicas- at least one was 20 years old. Others, if they weren't made with plastic, I would have assumed were personally crafted by Matthias Hohner himself. That says something profound. Oysler's videos not only pass along the knowledge of repair we're all sure harmonica companies have been conspiring to keep secret since the mid 19th Century, it challenges the notion that the harmonica is a disposable toy. The fact that the instrument is not only possible to, but worthy of, maintaining indefinitely says something about it. It says the harmonica is a real instrument, just like any other. I like that.
The day I watched the videos I brought two harps back from the dead and cost Oysler himself money with another.
First, there was a Marine Band 364 that was originally in G, but I retuned to a low F. It had sat fallow for years, it was one of my first retune jobs and I had done it poorly. The reeds were literally twisted from my errant tuning procedure and the harp would barely play. By using one of Oyslers's homemade tools, which I call Rupert's Super Duper Reed Massage, I used his metal "massage (he uses that word numerous times)" technique to get all the contorted reeds true. It plays beautifully. No need to buy another 364(for what, 25 bucks?)now. I also "massaged" the reeds of an A. Hohner MS Big River (refitted with a wood comb) back into playing shape.
In another case, I had a Seydel Blues Soloist Pro with smashed covers. I had assumed there was no way to bend it back, so I had planned to order another set of coverplates from Oysler for $10. I used the Rupert Super Duper Reed Massager to "massage" each coverplate back into shape. Sorry, Rupert, you just cost yourself ten bucks with that tip(you know I'll just put that toward another Chromatic DeLuxe).
Within a couple of days, Oyslers teachings had saved me more than $50. Tell me now, how much do those videos cost again?