Several folks have written about harmonicas irritating their lips and/or pulling their moustache hairs. Having experienced both of these problems, I decided to abuse the chunck of beeswax that Doug Tate gave me. Instead of using it to make the instrument more airtight, it can also be used to alleviate the above two problems. Melting the wax, using a low-wattage soldering iron, along the junction of the cover plate and the reed plate will 1. Make the harp more airtight, 2. Stop the harp from grabbing moustache hairs and making your eyes water, and 3. Decrease the friction between the lip and the harp, especially on harps like Hohner's Golden Melody or Huang Star Performers, which have protruding reed plates. Last time I was in the drug store (pharmacy), I saw "Smile Wax", which is made for dental braces, to reduce friction or whatever causes brace-wearers pain. I bought some, for my harp, of course, and found that this is even easier to use for purposes 2 and 3 above: one need not even use a soldering iron, but rather just roll the wax between the fingers, making it quite pliable, then force it into the groove between the reedplate and the coverplate. Only bad side is that I can no longer put the harp in a case without the wax getting goofed up. Oh yea, and ya gotta remove the wax in order to remove the cover plate for reed tuning, a more frequent need with Huang SPs, in my experience. =[||||||||||]= Rich Rittenhouse
