[Daren]

Hi Yan

Welcome to the forum, and congratulations on getting a P37!

You said you’ve been getting gurgling sounds. This is from a build up of moisture/condensation. I also experience this when doing a lot of melodica practise. The instrument can get saturated with condensation, and once wet, can take a long time to dry properly. The moisture causes all sorts of problems – unstable tuning, gurgling, partially sounding notes, and sometimes choked notes.

The only solution is finding a way to let the instrument fully dry. This can take days if you don’t open the instrument up. You said you washed the instrument. Bear in mind that after washing, the melodica is very very wet, and may not have dried as much be as you think, even if the reed plates are dry. If the gurgling happens again, its probably because of this. It needs to be fully dry to operate like it did when you first bought it.

You’ve read that you shouldn’t be “blowing too hard for the yamaha, especially new ones with unseasoned reeds”. I’m not sure I agree with this. Reeds don’t need seasoning, or playing in, and you can play as loud as you want! If you’re blowing excessively hard all the time, the reeds may go out of tune quicker, or fail prematurely, but they won’t cause that gurgling sound you’re describing.

You also said that “using the tongue contributes additional saliva into the melodica (from a harmonica forum). I am guessing that a suggested fix would be the to increase the gap between the reeds?” No, don’t increase the gaps – that would cause issues with the attack of the note.

With your level of practise, it might be worth having 2 or more instruments, so you can swap them over once they’re too wet, giving them a chance to dry.