okay hello this is liam ward at learnharmonica.com i know you can't see me here i am this week i'm here with the live stream as usual this week i'm going to be doing cleaning the harmonica i'm going to be cleaning the harmonica because i've had a few people asking about how to take a harmonica apart how to clean a harmonica so hopefully you'll find this useful today um i'll just go through first what i've got on the table in front of me here so i've got a bowl of water here just fresh cold water i've got a toothbrush not my own toothbrush that i use for my teeth just a separate toothbrush use for that monikers i've got some um little uh toothpicks slash cocktail sticks there um i've got a couple of screwdrivers i've got um some little flannels and towel things and then some surgical spirit this is from boots you can get it from um any pharmaceutical shop any uh medical supplies and it's an alcohol uh sort of rubbing alcohol substance and i've got three different harmonicas here i'm going to show you a little bit on each of them just because you've got slightly different makes and models here oops i've got a golden melody a special 20 and a marine band so they're all just ever so slightly different now if you haven't taken harmonica apart before there's not much to it the important thing is to just keep track of all the little nuts and bolts or screws um that you take apart as you go so i tend to keep a hand towel just here to keep everything on because i've got a nice white surface it's easier to see the little screws that are coming out so i'm going to start with a special 20. now i've got for this special 20 i've actually got an old sort of electrician's screwdriver if you use any sort of flat head screwdriver that's small enough for the holes on a special 20 and say the holes the screws so with a special 20 you've got two screws one at each end i'm just gonna undo these uh as quickly as i can as i go now almost all harmonicas are the same in that you've got only a few parts to them you've got the cover plates which is what i'm removing now and then once you've taken the cover plates off you're left with the reed plates which house the reeds and then the comb which is the bit in the middle so these are the cover plates they're now off all that they had on them was a tiny little screw and a tiny little uh washer like that so they're off i'm going to put them to the side for the minute what we're left with so far is we've got this here now the uh brass bit here that's the read plate he's got the reeds in it we've got the blow reeds and the draw reeds the bit in the middle is the comb this in this case is plastic on another of these it's going to be wood now at this point we've got even smaller screws holding this in place um so i'm going to have to take each of these screws out so you'll see we've got how many we've got uh six on this so i'm gonna just take those out i'm gonna use this same little flathead but i have got a proper phillips screwdriver if i needed it um so i'll just be taking these out so once you've taken these off that's going to be the harmonica completely disassembled again i'm just putting these screws aside as i take each one off and try and keep them in a nice little pile i have got a few harmonicas with missing screws where they've gone awol that i've cleaned them so you do want to just make sure that you keep track of these because it can affect the air tightness and that can affect the sound of the harmonica if you don't have all the screws in so those are out now and what we've got is the reed plates and we've got the cone so at this point i'm ready to have a clean now the first sort of provisional thing that i might do is just look over and see if there's any really big sort of parts so there's kind of a little bit of something horrible in the corner of one of these you can see there now i would just i'm just going to flick that out with one of these cocktail sticks that's what these are for so this is just for initial sort of cleaning i would go through and get any dry bits out it gets a bit revolting at this point i mean there's all sorts of things in here i'd get any dry bits out because if you put the alcohol on at this point then all you're going to get is kind of soggy little horrible bits in there um so that's just something to be aware of my computer says it's running out of battery so i'm gonna have to go and plug that in bear with me a second i'll be there any minute and there we go i'm back so as i say getting any loose bits out so that you don't get them turning soggy when you start cleaning this proper so again i would take the reed plates and just take out any sort of nasty big clunky bits this isn't too bad i try and clean my harmonicas quite regularly so i they don't tend to get in as much a state as they used to that said there's still some still pretty nasty bits of gunk that i'm getting off there um so give them a good sort of over with that and then uh just check the read plate sometimes with the read plates the cover plate sorry you get um just sort of spit and horrible stuff like that at this point i would open my surgical spirit and i get my toothbrush and i'd get another towel to lay out these on once i have given them a good clean because they're going to need somewhere to dry so i'm going to set up a little drying station here now if you're doing several harmonicas at once in one session as you're likely to do if you've got a few and the table can get a bit messy but it's quite useful to do several at once in that you can get one drying as you start another one and then once it's dry put it back together you'll see as i go because i'm going to do the next two or three and i should probably take my wedding ring off so i don't cover it in this horrible alcoholic stuff um okay so i'm going to start with the cover plate you can start with whatever you want i'm going to dip it in water and then i'm going to just get a little bit of that on the toothbrush and then i'm just rubbing across i'll show you a little closer just up and down softly like this now the cover plates can take a bit of a beating so they're not they're not too much of a concern so in terms of how gentle you have to be with them so take the second one i'm gonna wet that and give it a little rub once i've rubbed up and down it i'm just making sure that i rinse it again because you don't want any of that alcohol left on it and that's why it's important to leave it to dry as well because you don't want to be inhaling this stuff it's pretty nasty stuff again the comb probably go next do the same just brush length ways along that both sides and give it a good rinse it's got a funny smell to it this uh surgical spirit is kind of i don't know it smells a bit like um some sort of fizzy drink or something don't drink it i really don't think that's a very good idea okay read plates this is really important you see all these reads there you've got to be really careful with these if you knock these about too much at all you're really going to have problems when you put the harmonica back together you might find the notes don't play properly um or you affect the the tone of them or you actually just break those reeds completely so you have to be really gentle but it's the same technique i'm still just brushing along just making sure that i'm not being too harsh you never want to brush from the end of the reed towards the the nuts um the join you should never do that so always go lengthways as soon just really quite nice and gentle and now there's stuff done with the other ones give it a bit of a rinse give it a knock on the side of the um the bowl here we go second one and that's one harmonica done so that harmonica is now over here and it's drying i would maybe do well probably wouldn't do all my harmonicas because i've got so many it would take forever but i do more than one at once because you've got the stuff out why not now let's try the golden melody golden melody similar to the um special 20 in that we've only got one uh screw at either end of the harmonica but when we take this apart it is going to be just ever so slightly different so worth us seeing how this turns out when we take it apart now you'll get used to the harmonicas that you use you might prefer one brand one make one model um i use mainly honers i'm only using hones in this video i don't only play honest but they are the one i play most um so you notice here we've got a few screws this side we've also got a few screws this side so i've got seven in total four on one side and three on another so just gonna make sure that i get all of those out um safely as i say the advantage of doing several at once or one of the advantages is that you can get going with this next one whilst that first one is drying off over in the corner there um and then once we've done this one we could either do another one or we could put that first one back together so that's the screws out of one side and then screws out of the other side the actual makeup of the harmonica is the same and that all we've got is reed plates cover plates and the comb in the middle and this combs plastic as well it's just that it's a red one so we've got those those cover plates off we've now got the reed plates two reed plates there and we've got the comb now the exact same thing applies for cleaning this there's no point me you watching me clean this one as well so i'm going to put that aside and pretend that i've cleaned that for now because i want to show you the marine band because the marine man's a little bit different if you've never taken a marine band apart it's quite useful just to see what i'm doing here so the difference with the marine bands is that unlike the more modern um models if you like that i've just taken apart this doesn't have screws in it it's only got nails so the way that i'm going to take it apart i'm still going to use the same screwdriver this is quite a useful one because it's nice long and thin i'm just going to get in the gap there at the end of the harmonica and just tease it away like that bring it away and then i'm going to go to the other side of the harmonica and do the same thing so there we go and that's come away quite easily there now it might be quite tricky first time around because i've taken this apart before it's kind of loosened up a bit those little nails that you can see in the end there they've loosened up a little bit because i've taken it apart a few times so yours might take a little longer than this but that's one side away then i would do the same with the other side just ease that away and they've come apart there now that leaves us with the reed plates and the comb we've got a wooden comb here i don't wash the wooden comb in the alcohol solution i really don't i try to keep that wooden comb as as dry as possible i don't think it's a good idea you get a lot of swelling if you get these things wet now you can take these reed plates off it's a case of being able to get right between the reed and the um comb so i'm going to get a pen knife i'm going to get myself a nice fine blade and i'm going to try and just ease this away see how we get on here so i'm just going to try and get into one of these corners see if any of them looks more compelling than the next so i'm going to try one of these little corners here i'm going to just try and get in there you see i've got in that corner there i'm gonna try because it's kept together with these little bolts there and just lever that a little bit just trying to lever that away you can see it's coming away a little bit so i'm gonna then try and run it along i'm being really careful not to go too far into this because i don't want to hit the reeds and this is some something you have to be really careful about so see that it's coming away a little bit i'm gonna try and see if i can just run along and get near the other end of this now let's see if i can get in this end okay try and just ease that away oh i've got the the little nails are just dropping out so that's something i'm going to be aware of i'm trying to get these out let's see if this will come out now okay and we're almost there now i don't play a lot of marine bands so this isn't something that i have to do a lot i think the modern ones are great how you can take them apart really nice and easily but a lot of people swear by marine bands and really like the sound of them they think that the tone is better because you've got you've got that wooden comb there we go that's come away now that's taken a little bit more work um as i say i don't use these a lot that's pretty minging that is horrible so what i would do at this point is just get my um cocktail stick again i wouldn't use these in cocktails and just have a good good clean there at this point i could take the other reed plate off and i could wash the reed plate and wash the cover plates in the alcohol solution just as i have with my other harmonicas but i would not do that with the wooden one i'd give the wooden one a good um clean as i'm doing now and that would be basically what i'd do and then i'd put it back together again putting that back together you just have to make sure that you do everything in reverse that you did before so the first one we took apart is sitting over here i've got one final um little flannel here i just make sure i dry off this is my special 20 we're going to go back to here just make sure that i dry this all off because you don't want any of that alcoholic residue on your harmonica when you go to play it again so because i've kept the screws in a safe place first thing i can do is to line up these reedplates with the comb so the below reeds go on the top of the harmonica and we've got to make sure that on our left hand side is the longer reads and the right hand side of the shorter reads and if that's the case that's our the top of the harmonica so the big long notes long reads there for the low notes the little short reads for the high notes there so one of these is going to be a blow read play and one's going to be a draw now sometimes it can be tricky to tell this but what you've got to look for is low notes on the left and on the blow notes so with the reed facing downwards so you can't actually see those those reeds see there you can't see them they're underneath you want the low notes on the left and you want it so that all the the um join of the reeds are nearest to the hole that you're actually blowing in so that if you were to kind of just look underneath they're all along this side that's where they're joined there often you can tell which is the blow read plate as well because you can just see a little outline of where the screw has gone into these holes you can see uh on that one um you can see on that one there's a little sort of round the hole the draw reeds face outwards so those would be the draw reads on the bottom of the harmonica in this case we've got this little ridge there which gives a little cut out as well which helps us to identify where these would go so i would just need now to take each of these little screws and screw them back in place i'm not going to screw them really tight really flush to begin with because sometimes you find if you tighten one end it's hard to get one in over towards the other end of the reed plate so i'm just gonna keep it quite sort of gently and then what i'm gonna do is i am going to tighten them up near the end there we go that's in there and one more and then we'll be ready to just test this before tightening it all now at this point often i will just hold the cover plates in place now that i'm not going to put them on yet because i haven't tightened the screws on the reed plates yet but i'll just hold this in place just to check that the harmonica is working and just to confirm that i've put the reed plates in on in the right way this is a g harmonica that sounds right to me it sounds like they're in the right place so at this point i'm just gonna tighten each of these screws up and then all that remains is me to put these cover plates on again and then the harmonica will be reassembled so that's those almost tightened right i can put these cover plates on the cover plates actually i can be a little bit fiddly um because you've got two uh you've got the the screw and then you've got the little sort of washer on the other side as well now i tend to just place that washer i don't know if you can see this place that washer in place so i just put that over the hole and then i'd hold that whilst on the other side i put the screw over that hole and this can take a little bit of fiddling i've never had to do this in front of a camera before as well which is uh sorry if you can't see what i'm doing here because it's bad enough when you're trying to just do it and hold it yourself right let's see if that's gonna go into there let's see if i can get that in oh look at that it's in right so now i've got one side in there we go i've just got the other side to do so i put that together and that would give me my uh harmonica back together again so i won't um do that last screw now i'll leave myself to do that after the lesson but i hope that looking at this setup here has helped you understand a little bit more about cleaning your harmonicas um as i say i try and do mine regularly i'd love to have them clean after every gig but that's not going to happen is it um but the more you play them the more that it's useful to do this and necessary really it keeps the harmonicas longer i believe i think they're in better condition if they've been cleaned they play better and uh it's quite nice to just know that there isn't all that horrible gunk and stuff that is inevitably gets in there in the end anyway um the best form of cleaning is obviously prevention so don't drink fizzy drinks don't eat as you're playing or just before you're playing um and then you can keep your harmonicas as clean as possible okay i hope that's been useful for you i will see you again next week i'm gonna do i think one more live stream so please send me your questions and i will try and answer them next week take care and i'll see you again soon cheers