Brendan Power

All harmonicas, without exception, need regular maintenance and occasional major repairs. To tweak your harps how you like them and to save lots of time, money and hassle, if you're serious about your playing I strongly advise you to teach yourself as much as you can about all aspects of harmonica repair and customising. The most basic skills are reed gapping and fine-tuning, but it will help a lot if you also learn retuning, reed replacement, valve replacement, comb flattening, reed-slot embossing, slider assembly optimisation, and other skills.

But in my experience the reality is that probably only about 10-15% of players are really bothered with fixing their harmonicas; they just want to play them without having any knowledge of how they work. In fact, most are actually scared to even remove the coverplates - let alone start messing with fragile little reeds.

Here is a list of some harp techs I know and recommend. Not all will do general repairs, but they will know someone who can.