Drawn To My New Harmonica Holder - Simply Magnetic
Finding a good harmonica holder isn't easy as I am sure many players who have used a holder before will agree with me; it can be a nightmare getting one that works easily and smoothly AND stays in place!
Today I would like to share my experience with a new toy I have acquired last week after someone at an open mic used and recommended it to me.
My New One - Seydel Gecko
My new holder is a Seydel Geko and comes to an eye watering price of just under £70, but I do not regret spending that amount at all; the mechanism is simply ingenious and worth every penny.
My Old One - Hohner (I believe)
I have been using this standard holder for many years; it says "Made in Germany" on it, but I cannot honestly remember how much I paid for it at the time. A Hohner, that looks pretty much like mine comes to roughly £28 on Amazon right now, so not one of the cheaper ones.
My guess is, that my old one is in fact a Hohner, so I will call it that in my post.
Comparing the Two
A quick overview with the two main Seydel selling points marked with **.
| Hohner | Seydel Gecko | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Sturdyness | Very sturdy and robust | Sturdy, but feels a tiny bit flimsier as the bars are much thinner | |
| Controlling the fretboard | Controlling the chord hand can be tricky as the vertical bars are wide apart and often in the way so you have to move your head and/or shoulder around to see | The two vertical bars are closer together, so control of the fretboard is much easier with a straight view up to fret 12 or there abouts | |
| Changing harps ** | You may need two hands to hold both bars apart to swap harps, and could even do with a third as the springs make this slightly awkward indeed | The magnet on top of the holder is strong enough to safely hold a metal harp in place during play, but properly positioning and releasing it to swap is amazingly easy | |
| Positioning ** | Every swap or repositioning needs the loosening and tightening of a screw, including folding it flat for transport | A "Memory" mechanism will keep every harp in your prefered playing position, see the video on how that works. | |
| Padding | I put some foam stickers on just in cast to avoid scratches from the bar horizontal bars | Not needed as the harp is sitting on the smooth magnetic strip and stop from moving forward by a plastic bar | |
| Extras | n/a | Comes with soft pouch big enough to take all of my seven harps too | |
| Price currently UK | ca. £28 | ca. £69 |
My verdict
With this holder I am now really happy to play a few tunes in a row confidently changing harps over as needed.
I will still use the old one for harps that are not metal, as they won't work with the new one.
Pricey, but highly recommended!
Hope, this helps someone; thanks for reading!
I didn't know you played harmonica on a rack as well?
I have your old Hohner one as well as far as I can tell. I've had it for years and eventually I've had to add a washer sometimes to make the screw stiff enough to stay still and not fall open while playing. You ever have that issue?
Yup! But strangely it has not been so bad lately..
It's more a matter of "ooh, too close, change", "oooh, too far away now".. don't panic! 😂
Just got fed up with it and saw someone using it and thought, brill, that's it!
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It's a neat bit of kit. It can be worth paying more to get something that works better and you don't want to be messing around during a set. I looked up that brand when we were at the pub and saw they do expensive harmonicas too. I had not heard of them.
I bought a cheap rack as I thought I might use it with my kazoo, but it's not great. The springs are ridiculously strong and it might squash the kazoo. I need to try it with a harmonica as I haven't tried playing one as the same time as guitar.
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Haha, yeah, it might crush that indeed! And that would be a shame!
They're only alloy, aren't they, kazoos?
I am still waiting for your first guitar/harmonica song...
You could give Dylan a shot as a starting point.. 😃
The kazoo is not magnetic, but you could glue something onto it. A 5p coin would do.
I need to practice the harmonica as I've not played it in a while.
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