magnets for free reeds

[Deleted member 48]

Its related to free reeds and perhaps is also interesting for accordion makers:
The Seydel harmonica company made a new harmonica with magnetic sliders for changing the pitch of a free reed, inspired by Jim Antakis Turboslide harmonica with magnets.

https://www.seydel1847.de/epages/Se...ies/Products/Specialities/ALL_MINOR_HARMONICA


Seydel all minor harmonica of the month june 2019


In the past other experiments by Stroh and Wheatstone have been done with a single free reed (gliding reed, tooth bar, ...):
https://www.accordionists.info/showthread.php?tid=2430&highlight=gliding+reed

Or the James Amireaux Bazin free reed pitch pipe with slider:
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/286784

Great to see Seydel is doing some experiments with pitch change devices in free reeds.

 

[kimric]

You can drop the pitch on a accordion reed by bringing a magnet near it ,it sounds pretty cool.

 

[Deleted member 48]

Maybe we can pick up some ideas of harmonica makers. Harmonica players are physically very close to the reads, the lips and breath/air pressure only at millimeters distance from the free reeds.
Blues harmonica players always want to make variations in pitches and bends with a single free reed.

Here are some videos with James Antaki and his harmonica devices:

Turboslide harmonica demo

Behind the scenes tour at Turboharp, 3 parts:
  




turboslide harmonica


I dont see any immediate practical applications for accordionists to have magnetized reed pitch changing devices, but still, great to follow some of these tests and experiments.

What I would rather like to see is some experiments with tooth bars pressing down on free reeds to change pitches. This could have more practical advantages for accordions, concertinas, ...
If one could find a (simple) mechanism with rods and bars, to press down almost instantly on a single reed plate containing 4 reeds, you could form different chords with only 4 free reeds on the bass side of an accordion.
Youd have 4 steel reeds + 4 (or more) teeth to form a whole variety of chords. The mechanism would be similar to a stradella bass coupling mechanism. But the stradella bass still needs all 12 free reeds of the 12 chromatic notes to form the chords.
This way you could reduce the number of reeds to 4 long bass reeds in the left hand side, and reduce the size of an accordion.

Im always thinking of some form of miniature size lightweight traveler accordions.