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Harmonium Doctor, PO Box 70, Chase, BC (2026)

05/28/2023

Well here we go again! I’m into something brand new and a bit off the beaten path. A dear friend and Bhakti sister asked me if I would be able to fix a tanpura that was given to her by a mutual friend.

So after watching a 20 minute video explaining the strings and how to tune them I decided I would take a closer look at this “huge guitar” as our little boy has started calling it 😂

Well I’ve never done much more than pluck a few strings on one (this one) in my whole life so I guess I that qualified me to “fix” this thing 😜

I’m grateful to be confident in fixing almost anything and at the very least, not afraid to try! I have worked on my own guitar a bit so I have somewhat of an idea how the instrument is supposed to look and work at least.

So after closer examination I realized two main things. One was that the bridge on this one had moved. You can see in the one picture if you look close that there are shiny marks lower down where it used to be glued. Secondly the “neck” (almost certainly improper terminology!) where it meets the base had cracked badly and needed to be glued back together before anything else happened.

People often don’t realize just how much tension the strings of an instrument create on the wood. It looks like this one has been dropped or possibly slid sideways down the wall a time or two and with that latent tension on the neck it must’ve split at some point. This could also be somewhat humidity or climate related depending on where this one was stored over the years.

So I glued the neck and clamped it, will let that sit overnight and then go about glueing the bridge back into place tomorrow night (maybe)…

Then begins the process of tuning the thing which was the initial problem that she said was present as one of the k***s wouldn’t stay tuned properly.

Sounds like tuning it could be the most interesting part based on the video I watched. Like some other Indian instruments (tablas and sitar) it sounds like you can spend as much time tuning this one as you do playing it!!

Hope you’re well and Namaste 🙏🏼

Blessings,

T

04/11/2023

Well I’m still alive and occasionally these days someone asks me to repair their harmonium. That’s party by design and partly because Facebook doesn’t “approve” of me advertising my services on marketplace.

This harmonium belongs to a friend who I’ve done work on his other two harmoniums. He has a small dolly that he uses to transport his harmoniums, especially the large Paul & Co. This one unfortunately tipped off the cart and landed upside down.

The first picture shows what happens when the coupler rods get flipped up and they hold the keys up in the air. It’s a bit finicky to get them pushed down and properly positioned under the keys again. Mainly because you have to have the key most of the way down before you can get the rods in place which requires a thin screwdriver or other tool to reach under with.

After I got the keys back in place I ran through the keyboard and made sure all the reeds were sounding ok. Sometimes when harmoniums get dropped the reeds will buzz because they only need to be out of alignment by about 1 millimeter.

I cleaned and oiled the keyboard and the jaali (the part with the holes where the sound and air comes through) as it’s much easier to clean when it’s all apart.

My friend told me he’s been playing and enjoying this harmonium for 40 years. I could understand why once I got all my repairs done and I started playing it. It has a very rich and beautiful sound.

The last couple pictures are to show how many of the springs I’ve cut apart in the last few years as it seems that they are often too tall which results in poor sustain.

The other picture is a snapshot of what I keep in my toolbox for harmonium repairs. Doesn’t take much to do the work and some of what’s in the picture is actually for repairing an accordion that I sold a while back.

I’ve been contemplating teaching about repairs as I do occasionally get messages from people in far away places. I can often times explain how to do the repairs but it does take a bit of curiosity and mechanical aptitude. Tuning is a whole other thing but the repairs generally are fairly simple.

Hope you’re having a good week and many blessings if you made it this far:

Namaste,

Tanner

12/27/2022

🕉🙏🏼 I’ve had this harmonium in the closet for nearly a year. I bought it from a man who had no use for it as it was pretty much unplayable. Since that time my wife and I have a little boy in our family now and my time to fix and repair harmoniums has been very limited, to say the least.

Well this one is now singing nicely and found itself a new player last week. I’m happy that I was able to get it working properly again. It needed extensive repairs. I wish I’d taken more pictures of all the things that needed fixing, but it would have been quite the catalog of pictures...

Clearly visible in this picture is the jaali, the gold part that sits above the keys where the sound comes through. In this case it was completely missing so I custom made this one with holes spaced in a wave pattern.

The other piece that needed some love was the cover. It had orange velvet in the cutout that looked like someone spilled their chai on. I took out the fabric and painted it royal gold to match the jaali. Much prettier!

I bought this diamond in the rough for $200 and it needed a LOT of help to be both useable and more aesthetically pleasing. Buyer beware if you see a harmonium for that price. It’s likely because it’s not useful and needs heaps of TLC. That’s where I come to the rescue!

Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

Tanner 🕉🙏🏼☺️

04/07/2022

This harmonium has a special place in my heart, not only is it the first harmonium that I ever played, it was also the first harmonium I ever tuned. An elder friend who is an amazing kirtan musician lent it to my wife and I to play after we expressed an interest in learning.

She had two harmoniums and explained that this one was out of tune and couldn’t be played with other instruments but was still useful to learn on by itself. Well we did make great use of it to learn as we were both really drawn into the Bhakti path.

The harmonium has a wonderful tone and after we had learned to play quite a few chants I decided that maybe I would figure out how to retune it. I love to figure things out on my own and I enjoy a challenge. Boy oh boy, I didn’t have a clue what I was getting into!

It turned out that the harmonium actually was in tune with itself, otherwise known as relative tuning. Problem was that in western music instruments are tuned to A440 hertz. However in India, they don’t care so much about A440, sometimes their instruments are tuned to A450 or even A430. This slight and subtle difference only matters once you ask your friend to play guitar along with your harmonium and then there is this distinct irregularity between the instruments.

Anyways, I’m getting long winded but needless to say I figured out how to change the tuning of this harmonium from A450 down to A440. This requires filing or sanding each individual reed... a lot....there are 39 keys so 78 reeds, needless to say this was a huge undertaking.

Perhaps it was my ridiculous attention to detail, incredible amount of patience, the grace of Hanuman and Ganesh that pulled me through the portal to finish this project but by Shiva I did it!!

That was almost exactly 3 years ago, the first experience that drew me into learning about fixing and repairing harmoniums. Something I’ve enjoyed so much these past few years.

Now this harmonium has come back into our lives, a gift from our dear friend for our little boy, Saje, who will learn to play it some day when he is ready.

The pictures show one of the repairs I made which is replacing the wood guides that keep the lid in place when it is closed.

11/09/2021

Well hello again folks! Been on quite a hiatus from working on instruments but here is the latest one that found me. This is a beautiful Paul & Co triple Reed Scale Changer with Coupler.

When I got it the man told me he’d bought it new from Amazon (don’t do that) and it had never worked from the time he received it. They told him to send it back to India 😂

First thing I noticed was there was no spring inside the primary bellows. The spring acts to open the bellows when you’re pumping which “inhales” the air and keeps air pressure up. These triple Reed harmoniums take a LOT of air to sustain three reeds per key as well as send extra air to the other reeds that are being “coupled”.

There was also a leak from the transfer block were air passes from the primary bellows into the secondary. I also noticed that there we’re screws that had been taken out of the lower sound board and the vacant holes were leaking air from the inside of the primary bellows. Never seen that before and sadly I didn’t get a good picture of either of these things so you’ll have to use your imagination 😜

After I installed the spring in the bellows the air pressure a as 100 times better! Then I noticed a small hairline crack in the wood on the primary bellows next to the rear valve cover (where air comes in). I could feel air leaking through it so I glued that crack and even though it wasn’t perfect it was way better.

My understanding is that when the wood isn’t cured properly before it’s used in building these instruments and then it comes to Canada it can crack as it dries out.

There were also a few reeds that were buzzing so I did my best to track them all down and fix them.
This harmonium had also been shipped to Toronto and back to Vancouver Island so often the reeds get jostled in shipping ( IF they aren’t expertly packed) and can start to buzz a bit if they make even a tiny bit of contact with the opening they vibrate in.

He was so thrilled when he came to get it as he had never heard it make sound before!! He also left me his other harmonium which needs fine tuning and has a couple of buzzing reeds.

Hope you have a wonderful week!

Blessings,

Tanner

04/09/2021

Just finished fine tuning it and about to pack this harmonium up to send it to its new owner! She’s a beauty, hope you enjoy 😁

04/01/2021

Today’s project is a continuation of this harmonium I’ve been working on sporadically for a few weeks now.

This is a double reed top fold bellows harmonium, 7 pulls with two drone notes and tremolo. I had an issue with the rear valve cover on this harmonium as the leather had curled and it needed replacing. I’ve had a hard time finding a source for the type of leather I need for the valve covers and seals inside the harmonium so if anyone has any leads on split goat skin then please hit me with a DM! 🤣

I wound up totally replacing the valve cover from another harmonium I purchased to use for parts. I had to drill some new holes and do a few other modifications but seems like that aspect has been fixed.

When I tried playing the harmonium with the new valve cover it was a real wheezer!! Meaning it’s got sustain issues which I diagnosed and “treated” today. You can see the red fabric, it’s usually leather or sometimes even paper, had not been properly glued on the bottom edge so I pulled it back and glued it and I’ll go from there later today or tomorrow.

I’ve got to say one of the trickiest things about working on harmoniums is that you often wind up only able to do a little bit at a time so it’s good to have a few to work on at a time. I’m working on 5 of them right now and I’m almost done fixing one of them and posting it for sale so keep your eyes out for that one. I’ll post a video of me playing it before I send it on to a new home.

Thanks for checking out what I’m up to and hope you have a wonderful weekend with family and friends.

Blessings,
Tanner

03/01/2021

A quick post here of my work this morning. I’ll be pulling apart this harmonium to diagnose a sustain problem. This is one of the harmoniums I bought this past week and when I get it fixed it will be for sale. It’s a pretty basic standard harmonium and will have nice sound once the air sustain issue has been resolved. Hope you’re having a great day! Namaste, Tanner

03/01/2021

I’ve finished fixing this beautiful collapsible triple reed harmonium and I wanted to share its beautiful sound with any and all who cares to enjoy it.

02/23/2021

Here is an inside look into this weeks project. It’s another triple reed 13 scale changer harmonium with coupler. Similar to the last one however this one is collapsible which makes it a lot more portable than the Paul & Co. This one has sustain issues and needs a tuneup so I’ll post some pictures of that process as it unfolds. Hope you have an amazing day and a great week!

02/12/2021

Well this will be something different! I recently purchased this very compact safari style 3-1/4 octave harmonium. The guide feet that allow the harmonium to rise up in these portable style harmoniums were damaged so it was all wonky and swiveled when it was in the lifted position. I custom made two new feet so now at least it slides up and down properly. I played it for the first time a couple days ago and it’s actually pretty nice! It had air leak issues so I diagnosed that to be the rear valve cover as you can see in the pictures. I’m reinstalling that today and I just noticed another issue that will be a potential major roadblock for this harmonium. Can you see it in the last two pictures? These top fold bellows harmoniums use a torsion rod to “spring” the external bellows open once you’ve pumped it. That bar is missing from this harmonium, never had that before so more research and investigation will be necessary here. Stay “tuned” 😜🙏🏼🕉🔮🤷‍♂️ !

02/10/2021

Well I’m back at it on this cold winter day. Grateful to have a fun project to enjoy inside on a day like today although I may go skating later anyways 😜 I removed the back “valve cover” as the spring in this Paul & Co harmonium seemed very weak. I’m considering making my own springs as it’s very often been an issue with the harmoniums I’ve worked on. I diagnosed the air leak problem to be coming from the secondary bellows so you can see in the pictures the process of removing all the “pulls” and taking the lower sound board out as the secondary bellows it attached to the bottom. There was a smallish hole (Shiva knows how that got there!!) and I patched it with a small piece of leather. I’ll let it dry and reinstall it to see if there are any other leaks and go from there. I also removed some gummy spots that looked like they were left over from stickers. Lemon oil is the holy grail of removing unwanted sticky or touch to remove gunk from any surface. Hope you have a great day! 🙏🏼

Harmonium Doctor

05/28/2023

04/11/2023

12/27/2022

04/07/2022

11/09/2021

04/09/2021

04/01/2021

03/01/2021

03/01/2021

02/23/2021

02/12/2021

02/10/2021

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