Reply To: Does anyone know of a melodica technician / tuner

When I was looking for the reed plates for the Hammond 44 I spoke to George as well, and as you state he wants your melodica there to work on when he gets back from bus duty, and yes he quoted a 6-9 month period he holds your melodica, well that was totally unacceptable in my opinion. Yes he is knowledgable but I want someone dedicated to the craft. My accordion repair man repairs and tunes melodica in the same method George does and charges approx. $75 to $100 USD per melodica and does a great job. He also repairs and tunes for a lot of top musician in the LA area and that’s all he does. It’s Daves accordions in Atwater CA. He has several repair techs working there so the most your instrument will be there is 2 weeks and maybe three if he is really swamped. Note when I spoke to George he could not even get the reed plates and suggested I call Hammond USA direct of which they could not help me at all. I emailed a music store that I bought some melodica stands from in Japan and they shipped me two sets of reeds and some gaskets in a week. It is great that George has a good following of clients and obviously he is good at what he does, but $200 to tune a melodica with shipping is crazy. Heck a cent or two off is not going to stop the show.
For $200 bucks buy a decent tuner some tools and a handful of cheap melodicas and learn how to tune your melodicas. Learn to make jigs like the ones at the Hohner shop to make tuning fast and easy. Ok the rant is over.
Melodica-Me