Bollocks Jaw Harp

Beware: Please do not buy this Jaw Harp!

We would like to introduce this piece of metal, that is produced and sold as a Jaw Harp by the American company Schylling. It's a curiosity in the Jew's Harps World that deserves some attention due to its weirdness!

As we opened the highly expected parcel from the US, we couldn't believe our eyes. What appeared was a coarsely bent piece of round steel, in which the way to thick reed was hammered in. The reed is awkwardly stamped with some numbers that brings it out of shape. The good news is that it doesn't matter to the sound, because there is no sound possible even with a straight reed. The arms of this wanna-be instrument have a distance of about 3 mm or more to the reed! Another peculiarity of this pseudo Jew's Harp is its twanger nipple at the reed-end that is bent inwards instead of outwards. Strange, isn't it?

We have absolutely no explanation, how this ridiculous thing could evolve. But even more dubious is, that it seems to be seriously sold as a jaw harp wich is close to fraud.


By the way, the Jew's Harp image on the packaging of the Schylling Jaw Harp shows the typical shape of a competitors (Smith) instrument. On Schyllings website another (very good) old Smith model is shown as the actual instrument. For us it look pretty much like willful deception (see images).

The only useful part is the short playing instructions that comes with the Schylling Jaw Harp which can be used well with real Jaw Harps.