Paul & Company 9/3 Scale Changer Harmonium

Paul & Co. manufactures some of the worlds very best Kolkata-style harmoniums. Precision craftsmanship is evident in every detail and distinguishes their instruments from lower cost scale changers. This is their standard 9 scale, 3 reed model and it is without a doubt one of the very best harmoniums we've ever played.

Visiting the Paul & Company shop in Howrah, West Bengal, we have seen first-hand how these artisan craftsmen go about creating some of the worlds finest harmoniums. In that same spirit, we engage in an unparalleled tuning and refinement process, optimizing each unique piece to achieve it's full potential. Our efforts combined, Old Delhi Music delivers the absolute best Paul & Company harmoniums available anywhere.

Includes:

- Padded Gig Bag
- Learning offers from our friends at the Bhakti Breakfast Club (one month FREE access) and KirtanLeader.com (FREE 3 song course + discount offers)
- Expert tuning and refinement services completed at our shop in our Urbana, IL

- Weight: 39.5 lbs.
- Dimensions: 25.75 x 16 x 8.5 in. (closed), 25.75 x 16 x 10.5 in. (open)
- Exterior Construction: Teak
- Interior Construction: Teak
- Box Type: Traditional Collapsing
- Key Construction: Two-piece
- Number of Keys: 37 sliding
- Reed type: Palitana, Jivanlal R.T. Samrat 
- Reed banks: 3 sets (Bass, Male, Female)
- Reed orientation: Horizontal (Bass) / Vertical (Male, Female)
- Scale changer: 9 scales
- Stops: 4 (Bass, Male, Female, Tremolo)
- Drones: 7
- Coupler: left action

SHIPPING: Your instrument will arrive safely, and if it doesn't, we'll take care of it. Our packing methods have ensured that over 99% of the instruments we ship arrive undamaged. Should things not go perfectly, we will get you a replacement, refund, part or whatever is necessary. No problem.

STORE: Old Delhi Music makes buying a quality harmonium, tabla set, sitar, or any other Indian instruments easy. 

Our business is family owned and operated since 2010. In the U.S., we are a small team of musicians dedicated to refinements and customer support. In India, we’ve built relationships with many of the country's best musical artisans and founded a workshop where our staff ensures quality.

We sell and ship the best Indian instruments available on earth throughout North America and globally.

For the complete back story, check out this video -

For more on our founder and origin story, this video was produced in 2014 for the PBS "Indie America" series -

OUR TUNING PROCESS:

Our standard harmonium tuning process begins at our shop in India and ends at our U.S. location where a member of our staff - all highly trained and deeply experienced musicians - will finalize the set-up and tuning on every harmonium we sell. You won't find a more thorough refinement process anywhere.

This harmonium is available with the following tuning options:

- Equal tuning (Free): An Equal or "Traditional" Indian tuned instrument can be played with other instruments as long as they are tuned to match the harmonium. To complete this basic service, we determine roughly where the instrument is already settled out, which is typically higher than A440 and generally out of tune up and down the scale. Once we know about how it is generally pitched, we check and adjust each reed individually as needed and then match octaves along with common intervals. This is the traditional approach for tuning harmoniums.

- Concert Pitch / A440 tuning (Optional; fee varies): A Concert Pitch tuned harmonium will match the default tuning for Western Instruments - piano, guitar, etc. - "equal tempered" with the middle A resonating at exactly 440 hz. For this service, all reeds are retuned up and down to scale to correspond with the specific Concert Pitch standard. 

This service requires additional wait time since we have to first tune everything once, allow it to settle out for a day or so, and then go back through it again to make finer adjustments similar to what we do when Equal tuning. Only in this case, we are Equal tuning so that everything is pitched to correspond right with A440.

While much of India is rapidly advancing, the Indian instrument manufacturing process remains very old school. From touch ups to tuning, much of what we do at Old Delhi Music is add a layer of quality control to an otherwise non-standardized production process.

We wrote THIS ARTICLE to ensure customers understand and might appreciate this vintage production style, the unique products we carry, and how we're working to ensure genuine quality, despite the odds. It's a quick read, and definitely worthwhile for anyone considering the purchase of a traditional Indian instrument.

Thank you,
Old Delhi Music