[Alan Brinton]

Shion,

You might find that slightly reducing the gaps of all or many of the reeds on your M-37C has encouraging immediate results but that you will come to regret it over time. Choking problems are likely to arise as you become more experienced and more comfortable with the instrument and are bending notes. When a reed chokes and/or occasionally “sticks”, the solution is almost always to widen the gap slightly. What seems to be working nicely at the workbench doesn’t always carry over into the heat of battle. Suzuki’s high end Melodions are well designed and carefully crafted. The M-37C has a long history, going back to Suzuki’s 1960-70s 36 key models. Historically speaking, Suzuki has been distinguished by its experimentation and innovation and the refinement of the details of its Melodions. In other words, they know what they’re doing. The tuning and gapping of a new metal tray Suzuki is generally fairly good and uniform. There’s always room for some fine tuning and occasional gap adjustment, but slightly closing all the gaps may not work out so well over the long haul. We had a discussion about this some time ago that you can probably find by searching the Forums. I tried it on one melodica, a Yamaha I think it was, and ended up going through the more laborious process of undoing what I had done.

Alan