Thank you Will, and speaking of Will Wilde, this is a gig for him, not his endorsement of the Harmonicaster. In many ways this version is the result of feedback, no pun intended from Will. His honest appraisel has been invaluable but again, I want to make it clear that no endorsement is implied or expressed by his playing here. Similarly, if I mention the name of players who have graciously tried out my little gizmo, that is only for historical purposes and no endorsements are implied or expressed.

I also have another disclaimer to make. Whoever it was, Little Walter, Snooky Pryor, or Sonny Boy II, who first cupped a harmonica to a cheesy PA microphone created one of the great sounds of modern music, right up there with Fender single coils, Seth Lover's humbuckers, and Laurens Hammond's tonewheel organs. You may have spent 10, 20, or 30 years perfecting your technique and tone with a microphone. I love that sound and I'm not trying to replace it or ask you to give it up. I'm just trying to make you a new tool for your tonal toolbox and expand the harmonica's possibilities.

I'm sure that back in 1948, someone said, "Leo, that newfangled Telecaster thing you're making doesn't sound and play exactly like my Martin acoustic." This is a new thing and harmonica players will determine its potential.

The Harmonicaster is the first electromagnetic pickup based electric harmonica to reach production. It works similarly to how an electric guitar or bass works, only with steel reeds, made by Seydel, instead of steel strings. The vibrating reed induces a current in the pickup which can then be amplified.

The idea is not completely original. In doing a patent search I found some prior art. There have been electric accordions, and after all, an accordion is just a harmonica with a bellows and an ego. More specifically to harmonicas, I came across a few attempts to make electric harps. One did use individual magnetic pickups for each reed, though as far as I know it was never implemented in a commercial product. The Harmonicaster, by the way, uses a single pickup for all ten reeds on a reedplate.

My favorite early electric harmonica was one that suggested turning the reeds into variable capacitors (not unlike how the tuners in old tvs and radios work). This was in the vaccum tube era and I'm not so sure, however, that I'd want to put something made of metal in my mouth that was carrying 600 volts of bias current. Just to reassure you, the Harmonicaster will only shock you because of how cool it is. There's no more chance of getting an electrical shock with it than there is with a guitar. 

The story of the Harmonicaster goes back almost 30 years. I started playing harmonica and subscribed to the harp-l mailing list. I've always been interested in music and sound reproduction technology so I asked the list, "Has anyone ever made an electric harmonica?" I thought that using steel reeds and magnetic pickups might make it more resistant to feedback than a microphone. Because it would essentially be based on electric guitar electronics, it would also be compatible with all sorts of effects pedals and devices.

The answers that I got were along the lines of, "This is how we do it, kid, with a bullet mic."

Undeterred, I contacted a chromatic tech by the name of Vern Smith who graciously agreed to make me six reeds out of some spring steel stock that I sent him. That way I could test bass, midrange, and treble reeds. I then called up Lace Music Products out of the blue, asked for Jeff Lace and told him what I was trying to do. "Do you have a pickup whose element is 80mm wide or more?" "Yes, our Lace Sensor for the Fender Jazz Bass," he answered and then freebied me a pickup because he thought the idea was cool.

I cobbled together some wood to hold the pickup and comb.

The proof of concept worked. It sounded cool. It was still harmonica but with an electric tone. It had some sustain, which I thought might be an issue, since you can't mute reeds like you can strings on a guitar, but I discovered that no matter how loud I had the amp set to, I couldn't get it to feedback. This had some practical benefit for harmonica players.

Cool idea, but I was just a guy in Detroit tinkering in my basement. Nobody mass produced harmonicas with steel reeds and I certainly didn't have the resources to have them made myself.

Fast forward about 20 years to 2013. I was feeling a bit bored and I decided to start practicing and playing again so I opened up the latest email digest from harp-l, which I had continued to subscribe to over the years. That's when I found out that Seydel was making stainless steel reeds.

I've worked in the auto industry and while most people think that stainless steel isn't magnetic, there are magnetic grades of stainless and if Seydel was using one of those, maybe I could take the idea beyond proof of concept. 

I contacted Rupert Oysler, Seydel's US rep, and asked what kind of steel they were using and if it was magnetic. He said it was a proprietary alloy that he wasn't free to identify but he did tell me that it was magnetic. I ordered a Session Steel harp, a couple of Lace Jazz Bass Sensors, and using pieces of rock maple in varying thicknesses, I was able to laminate together a housing for the comb and pickups. Since the pickups had to be centered over the reed tips, that created a real estate conflict with the player's mouth, so I added a mouthpiece, sealed to the comb with a mold in place silicone gasket I made. It took about a month to make the first prototype.

It seemed to work. It could play very loudly without any feedback, but like Leo Fender and Laurens Hammond, I couldn't play my own instrument very well. Fortunately, I live about an hour from Ann Arbor, where harmonica virtuoso Peter Madcat Ruth, a world class player, lives. I called Peter and he graciously agreed to check it out. He played it, said that unlike some of the other efforts to electrify harmonica it wasn't a "sin wave generator" but that it actually sounded like an electric harmonica. He also said is sounded like a harmonica in a box, probably due to the sustain, but he encouraged me to work on it. Peter is a master at hand effects and he was concerned that he couldn't do hand wahs with it. "That's what the wah pedal is for," I told him and smiled. Again, no endorsement is implied or expressed. That's just how the story goes.

A short while later, Jason Ricci was doing a gig with Johnny Winter's band at Callahan's in Pontiac, just outside of Detroit. I went over during the afternoon, hoping to meet Jason during the sound check. One of the Callahan brothers, a mountain of a man, gruffly asked me what I was trying to do, but nobody from the band was there. He didn't quite throw me out, but he wasn't happy. Later though, when he saw that I paid the $60 cover for the show, he introduced me to Jason after the gig. Jason played it, said he wouldn't use it onstage as it was but that he might play around with it in the studio. Considering that Jason's one of the best harp players ever, that was encouraging. Again, no endorsement expressed or implied. As a matter of fact, Jason has told me that he hates the earlier versions. 

I found a 3D print shop in Ann Arbor that quoted me a ridiculously low price of $300 to do the digital design work. Unfortunately, their freelance designer working under contract decided to go incommunicado for almost a year, resulting in me having to threaten to go to the police to get my prototype back. Their next designer finished the first iteration, which looked a bit like a cross between and ocarina and a Viewmaster 3D slide viewer. You removed front cover, slid the harmonica into the housing, closed the front cover, secured with magnets, compressing and sealing the gasket, and played through a mouthpiece that was about an inch long.

That was the version that I took to the summer NAMM show for the first time. I went just to get reactions and wasn't trying to take orders. The reaction was very positive and even had interest from one of the largest music store chains in the country.

Brendan Power, whose cleverness as an inventor is only exceeded by his talent as a musician, has also quite graciously let me pick his brains over the years. It was Brendan who suggested that there might be pitch issues due to the long mouthpiece and Helmholtz resonances. There's a reason why the chambers in the combs are sized to the reeds. My response was, "Nobody's complained yet," which was true.

Around then Will Wilde found me on Facebook, told me that he played loud, high gain, rock and roll and he was looking for something that wouldn't feedback, so I sent him one and it turned out that Brendan knew what he was talking about and that there were playability and pitch issues.

That resulted in the first major redesign. To be able to expose enough of the harmonica to play it directly I had a problem. The pickups have to be centered over the reed tips and the tips of the draw reeds are all lined up in a row just a few millimeters from the player's lips. I believe harmonica mfgs do that so the draw and blow reedplates can be identified quick by sight. Brendan Powers came up with the idea to have draw reeds mounted to blow plates (which have the reeds pointing away from the player). That let me move the draw pickup far enough forward to expose about 10mm, 3/8", of the harmonica out of the back of the housing.

I took a prototype here to the SPAH convention to have Will try it out. We drew a crowd of very interested folks in the hotel lobby but after he got back to the UK and played it more extensively, he said I needed to expose more of the harp.

That resulted in the second major redesign, the basis for the current version which I'm launching here at SPAH. I needed to be able to expose as much of the harmonica as possible which meant a completely different approach. Rather than use pickups external to the harmonica, what if I could make a pickup that was thin enough to fit between the coverplates and the reeds, without interfering with the reeds' movements? Fortuitously in addition to their famous line of Lace Sensor pickups, Lace also makes a line of unconventional pickups under the Alumitone brand. Also known as "single loop current transformer" pickups, Alumitones are essentially self-generating transformers. A transformer is a ferrous core surrounded by primary and secondary windings. Current flowing in the primary turns the core into an eletromagnet which then induces a current in the secondary coil. The ratio of windings between the primary and secondary determines how much the transformer will step up or down the voltage. In an alumitone, there is a loop of waterjet cut aluminum plate with embedded magnets. The loop is inductively linked to a pair of relatively tiny coils made up of very fine gauge wire by a ferrous core. The motion of the magnetized string or reed causes a small current to be generated in the aluminum loop, which is then stepped up by the secondary coils to a level appropriate for an amplifier. As it happens, one of the Alumitone pickups Lace makes is for cigar box guitars and is essentially just a waterjet cut flate plate of 1/8" aluminum. I asked Jeff if the thickness of the primary mattered and he said no, it's the surface area that counts. I then spent about a year going back and forth with Jeff about various profiles cut from 1/16" (1.6mm) thick aluminum. I also had to source magnets that were strong enough to work but not so strong that they detuned the reeds, like how Jim Antaki came up with a tunable harp. The magnets have to be just 3mm wide, which proved to be a problem. It's hard to mechanically cut something that narrow accurately with using dies. Using a paper shear meant discarding a number of magnets that didn't fit properly for every one that did. That's when I realized that since the magnets were polymer based, like refrigerator magnets, they could be laser cut. I've since upgraded my laser equipment. If you're interested, I use an XTool D1 Pro diode laser, and the 3D printing is done on a Bambu Labs X1C, a coreXY machine. I also have a couple of genuine Prusa printers that I still use for the knobs - the Bambu prints too fast for small parts.

The supply chain for my pickups starts in Reno, NV, with a laser cutting company called Send Cut Send. I upload the DXF CAD files, they cut the aluminum blanks and ship them to me in Detroit, where I bend them to final shape on a sheet metal brake and glue in the magnets. They then get sent back out west, to California, for Lace to add the ferrous cores and coils and return them to me for final assembly of the Harmonicasters.

I just want to say that it's been a pleasure working with Jeff and Don Lace and their crew. I wouldn't be here today without their generous assistance. Likewise, Rupert, Bertram, and Florian at Seydel have also been most helpful.

I sent off a sample device to England for Will to test and he said that it was fully playable, but that he thought the sustain was an issue and affected how articulately notes sounded. On the bass reeds they can sustain for more than a second. As long as the reed is vibrating it will induce a signal in the pickup, even if it isn't moving enough air to be audible acoustically. 

About that sustain and tone: Over the past 10 years dozens of harmonica players and scores of other musicians have heard the Harmonicaster without dampened reeds and with unrestrained sustain. I've shown it at three NAMM shows and demonstrated it to major retailers as well as proprietors of mom & pop music stores. I'd be lying if I said less than 80% of people who have heard it come away impressed with the tone even with that sustain. Most people are kind of blown away by the tone. After all, nowadays plenty of harp players will use delay, reverb, or chorus to fatten up the tone. However, advanced players like Will, Jason, and Peter have well trained ears and they can hear that sustain. Generally, if four out of five people like a musical instrument it should be a success, but if the 20% who don't like it are the most expert players, I'm going to have a rough row to hoe.

Even worse, Will said the sustain was a fatal flaw. He also said the Harmonicaster was noisy from hiss and RFI when he was playing through a high gain amp, I think a Mesa Boogie.

I suppose I could have shrugged my shoulders and given up, but I'm the son of a man described at his funeral by our family's rabbi as "a stubborn ox". Also, a few years ago my son, my only son Moshe, whom I love said to me, "It's really inspirational how you never gave up on your electric harmonica idea after all these years." "Damn you, I said. Now I can't quit or I will disappoint my only son."

The noise was easily enough dealt with by using a high quality carbon black based shielding paint from MG Chemical on the inside of the coverplates, control housing, and front cover. Essentially it's a Faraday cage so any EFI is routed to ground. I tried a few methods to reduce sustain. I spent about a year working with noise suppression electronics and waited another year while that supplier dealt with supply chain issues but in the end decided it was too complicated, too expensive, and the end result looking kind of clunky too. Instead, to reduce sustain I settled on the simple solution of dampening the reeds with small pieces of adhesive backed EVA foam placed at the base of the reeds. Again, the laser comes in handy as it's kind of difficult to otherwise cut 4.5mm x 3.25mm pieces of foam accurately. They're applied similarly to how valves or wind savers are put on chromatic harmonicas so the process is production friendly. They significantly reduce the sustain to about what you get out of microphone, which by the way does have a brief burst of sustain, without affecting pitch or playability.

There are onboard volume, and passive bass and treble controls, using slider potentiometers ergonomically located right at your fingertips, allowing for volume swells, tremolo, and vibrato effects. For reliability, the controls are on a printed circuit board. There is also a coil-splitting switch to allow both humbucker and single coil pickup operation. The output jack is a multicontact PureTone jack.

I get asked why I'm 3D printing the housings and coverplates. One reason is I wouldn't be here today if I had sunk thousands of dollars into injection molds for the earlier designs. 3D printing has allowed me to make the revisions and modifications that I've done without having to sink money into hard tooling. Another reason is that it allows me to use color. Not only are the control housings available in a rainbow of solid, sparkle, and metallic colors, for some visual pop onstage, but the coverplates are also 3D printed, with the key signatures color coded per the standard music instruction system popularized by Boomwhacker. In a happy coincidence, Seydel happens to make Session Steel combs in colors that match the coverplates. Once printed, the coverplates' playing surfaces are sanded and polished to a mirror-smooth finish in a 12 step process going up to 6,000 grit buffing pads. They are then finished with a durable high gloss, food safe, 2 component automotive clear coat.

The Harmonicaster's harmonicas latch securely to the control housing with strong, embedded neodymium magnets, so you don't have to worry about things coming loose when not playing. Changing keys takes just seconds. Slide out one harp, replace it with another and you're good to go.

I want to stress that the Harmonicaster is a system, so no, you can't use other brands of harps or even standard Seydel harmonicas. No, you can't use your favorite brass reeds, they won't work with electromagnetic pickups. I can, however, provide alternate tunings. As a matter of fact, Will was using one in his own unique Wilde Tuning.

The result is something that's compact and easy to hold, about half the height of a Green Bullet or JT30, and you only have to grasp one thing, not the mic and a harp. It's also lightweight. My '90s vintage JT30 weighs about 290 grams while my Green Bullet is about 345. A Marine Band harmonica weighs 58 gms and a Lee Oskar 64. That means a traditional rig can weighs more than 14 ounces, almost a lb. With a Harmonicaster harmonica, the Harmonicaster system weighs in at just 204 gms, just a bit over 7 ounces about half of what a Green Bullet setup would weigh.

To give you a dramatic idea of the difference in weight:

[Do demo with scale].

Will is going to do a more extended playing demonstration, including using a variety of pedals, and then we'll open it up for Q&A but first let me demonstrate just how feedback resistant the Harmonicaster is. This is a 100 watt Boss Katana amplifier. Let me dime the amp on the Clean setting. Gain, volume, and master are all turned up all the way. I can put the Harmonicaster inches from the speaker and it won't feedback, and just so you know the amp is dimed... [Have Will play I'm A Man riff]. Now let me put the amp on standby and plug in a Green Bullet.