Post by rod on Apr 29, 2020 4:02:46 GMT
Hi All, I was wondering how many of us still remember their very first harmonica. Mine was a Hohner Echo Vamper in the key of C. I was about 8 years old so it would have been around 1966. There was a music shop in Norwich, the nearest city to where I live that I used to love to look around and look at the new shiny instruments that were on display. It was late in the year and my parents took me in for a look when I saw an advert on the wall for a harmonica that it said was played by The Beatles. I asked my mother if I could have a harmonica the same as John Lennon's. Sure enough on Christmas morning there it was a new shiny Echo Vamper. This was the first "real" instrument I had ever had. I loved that harp and played it all the time, my mother told me I was really good (I'm sure I wasn't). The following Christmas I got my first guitar so the harmonica ended up forgotten about in the back of a drawer somewhere, never to be picked up again. I had discovered Jimi Hendrix by then. I have often told this story to my family and at Christmas 2018 my wife gave me a wonderful surprise. She had looked on Ebay and found an Echo Vamper. It was like meeting up with an old friend. To be honest this old harmonica really needs some work done to it to restore it to it's former glory and that's not something that I have the skills to do, but it did get me playing again after all these years. This time I'm not going to loose this one.
