The Suzuki Overdrive Harmonica (MR-300) has a special patent to protect its incredible design. Precisely placed holes in the top and bottom of this harmonica allow you to produce thick, rich, and beautiful over-blow and over-draw sounds.
Unlike other mainstream brands Suzuki is strill mad in japan. Known as the most durable and precise blowing harmonicas on the market.
Years in the making, the amazing new Overdrive Harmonica is so unique, it even has a special patent to protect its incredible design. Precisely placed holes in the top and bottom of this harmonica allow you to produce thick, rich and beautiful over-blow and over-draw sounds. Although players have been bending notes for more than a century, it has only recently been discovered that when you draw bend, it is the BLOW reed that makes the bent note. Conversely, when you blow bend, it is the opposite blow reed in the same air channel that makes the bent note. With a little practice, the new Overdrive Harmonica will let you blow and draw notes with greater control and much bigger volume than any harmonica you've ever played! Comes with deluxe carrying case First of all, the Overdrive is a very well-made harp. It looks good, with slick black covers and a solid red comb, both made from some sort of moulded resin. The design of the harp, with the comb and reedplates sandwiched between solid covers, makes it very airtight indeed, despite having only two screws to hold the whole lot together. The materials used feel nice in the mouth and are smoothly contoured - in fact, they may be a bit too smoothly contoured for sweaty hands on a stage! The whole harp has the look and feel of a well made instrument.
The Suzuki Overdrive has been years in the making, the amazing Overdrive Harmonica is so unique, it even has a special patent to protect its amazing design. Precisely placed holes in the top and bottom of this mouth organ allow you to produce thick, rich and beautiful over-blow and over-draw sounds. Although players have been bending notes for more than a century, it has only recently been discovered that when you draw bend, it is the BLOW reed that makes the bent note. Conversely, when you blow bend, it is the opposite blow reed in the same air channel that makes the bent note. With practice, the new Overdrive Harmonica will let you blow and draw notes with greater control and much bigger volume than any harmonica you’ve ever played!
In "normal" play (ie, without overblows) the harp responds very well. It is very loud and the individual cover chambers give a rich, penetrating tone, perfect for cutting through noisy sessions. They also help players with small hands get those heavily cupped tonal changes obtained by Rice Miller (SBWII) and other big-handed blues players. The tuning is equal temperament, typical of most far Eastern harps and is fairly accurately tuned at about A=444. The reeds themselves look similar to those used on the Suzuki BluesMaster - they seem to have good tolerances and are tuned without the diagonal file marks that certain factories inflict upon their reeds. It is possible to give the lowest draw reeds a very hard attack without causing them to rattle against the lower cover, as on many lower keyed diatonics. Several people have described this as one of the best factory-made harps they have ever played and I think I must agree.
So how about the overblows for which they are designed? Well, it takes a while to find a comfortable grip which allows your fingers to be ready to stop the holes when needed, but keep them clear of the holes at other times. I suspect that the ideal hand position will vary from player to player. Because the separate chambers for each reed alter slightly how that reed responds, it doesn't feel exactly the same as playing without covers and stopping the reeds directly, but the overblows and overdraws produced are every bit as strong and controllable. In fact, unlike the Bahnson harp, it is pretty much impossible to get overblows in the "normal" manner - you really have to stop the appropriate holes to get them to sound. And to be honest, stopping the holes one at a time can be a bit fiddley, but thankfully it's not really essential to block them individually. I've managed to find a hand position where my left index finger can block the holes for 1-6 blow and the heel of my right hand can block the holes for 7-10 draw - it feels a little unusual, but is becoming less so with practice, although it is much harder to do well whilst hand-holding a microphone. Still, you don't get anything for nothing and no matter how good you are at overblowing a standard harp, the Overdrive allows you to manipulate overblows and overdraws in ways that are either impractical or impossible on any other harmonica.
As well as overblows and overdraws, this harp enables you to do some other cool things. If you cover the blow holes whilst playing draw notes, or vice versa, it is like adding temporary valves to the harp. For example, if you block the hole for 4 draw, you can now bend 4 blow in a manner similar to a chromatic harmonica, or valved diatonic. Also, by partially covering and uncovering the cover holes you can produce some interesting tremolo and vibrato effects.
Even more interesting is using selective blocking of reeds to increase the range of blues-style bends available. If you adjust your embouchure to play the 4 and 5 reeds, then block off the cover holes for 4 blow and 5 draw using your fingers, you can bend the 5 blow down in pitch by a semitone (in a similar manner to blow bending hole 8 - on a C harp, this would be bending E down to Eb).
Whilst holding the same mouth position, if you then block off 4 draw and 5 blow, you can do a regular blues-style bend on 5 draw that can lower it as much as four semitones (on a C harp, this would be bending the F down to around C#).
Similar effects can be done on the other holes - I'll leave it to you to work out all the possibilities! It may be difficult to make use of these techniques in the middle of a fast run of notes, but I'm sure that you could make good use of them in certain contexts.
You can also selectively block holes to get chord voicings that would be otherwise difficult or impossible to play. Here is a wide voicing of a C major chord played by blowing in holes 1, 3 and 5, with the 2 and 4 blow reeds blocked by my fingers:
Drawing on holes 1, 3 and 5 with draw reeds 2 and 4 blocked gives you a nice wide voicing of a G7 chord:
Or how about a Dm chord played on holes 4, 5 and 6 draw, with 1 draw added as a low root tone (2 and 3 draw reeds blocked):
More exotic is this quintal triad played on holes 2, 4 and 6 draw:
I'm sure this harp has many other possibilities just waiting to be discovered, but there are a few negative points I should mention.
