Melodica Blocking Help Requested

[Antonio Freixas]

I hope I’m using the right term. I say “blocking” to mean when one blows into the melodica, presses a key and nothing happens.

I’m assuming the reed is jammed or stuck in some way. I don’t think it’s a moisture problem. I took the case apart and let the reeds dry for a few hours. I had the problem again after a little bit of playing.

I recently decided to re-gap and tune my melodica. I gapped, the tuned. Perhaps that was the wrong order? I didn’t really mess with many reeds–I tried to stick mainly with the ones that seem way off compared to their neighbors. The keys that are having problems are higher notes that I’m pretty sure I didn’t re-gap.

Before tuning, I hadn’t had any problems in a long time. After a couple of weeks after re-tuning, I ran into some of the worst “blocking” problems I’ve encountered: multiple notes, repeatedly blocking for seconds.

Any suggestions welcome.

[Alan Brinton]

Hi, Antonio. It sounds to me like you may have closed the gaps too much. I’d try opening them up on particular keys and retesting. Or closing the gaps if that doesn’t work. It seems unlikely that tuning changes are the problem. I understand that you don’t think you re-gapped the keys with which you’re having the problem, but it seems likely that you actually did. Choking keys are usually the result of gapping issues. I’m very interested in hearing how this is resolved.

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