[Alan Brinton]

I recently contacted George Miklas — http://www.harmonicagallery.com/repair

This guy seems to know what he’s doing and to be dedicated to his craft. He summarized his services as follows:

I charge $50 per hour to tune Melodicas and I have a 6-9 month back up – first in, first out. Work currently on my workbench was received 7 months ago. I also replace individual reeds at a fee of $50.00 per reed.

My method to tuning… The middle octave is tuned to A=440 according to electronic tuner. Then all notes are tuned to that middle octave. Finally, I check fifths and triads across the entire range (exception: I don’t check triads on the bass models)

As I might assume that you already know, the tuning on melodicas is effected by the back pressure of the case assembly. Therefore, I take all tuning readings with the instrument fully assembled. I disassemble / assemble the instrument 5-8 times throughout the course of tuning.

A Suzuki/Hammond Pro44 will take 3-4 hours to tune completely.

In the past three years, I have retuned 8 Hammond Pro44, 2 Suzuki Pro37, and 2 Hammond B-24H

I was inquiring about replacing a bladder on a bass melodica and may hear more from him on that.