[Alan Brinton]

You are in all probability hearing frequencies that I don’t, Daren, as a result of damage to my hearing in the military almost fifty years ago. I have hearing aids, as of a few months ago, but I have not adjusted to using them when I’m listening to or working on music or on melodicas, which is quite a lot of the time. I’ll have to put the aids on for a few days and listen again. Possibly, though, we’re not understanding “muted” in the same way. When we’re commenting on the sound of different melodicas and comparing them, I’m afraid that we, most of us at least, don’t have very good linguistic resources for doing so. When I think muted, “muffled” comes to mind, though that doesn’t seem quite right, since I tend to like the melodica sound I’m calling “muted,” but muffling of sound is the problem with my (unaided) hearing, and I don’t like that in either conversation or listening to music. I was using “open” for what I perceive as the less muted sound of the Scaletta. I hear the Pro37-v2 as toward the other extreme in comparison with both the Scaletta and the Yamaha and find it to be grating.