Welcome to the website of a new harmonica design/tech partnership, devoted exclusively to pushing the envelope of what's possible on the instrument! Everything here is created with that goal in mind - manifested in two product categories:

  1. Innovative accessories that improve the capabilities of standard diatonic and chromatic harps beyond their current limits.
  2. Entirely new harmonicas that allow players to do stuff that is simply impossible on existing models.
The new X-Reed partnership is comprised of UK-based New Zealander Brendan Power (product concepts/design/prototyping) & Portugal-based Brazilian André Coelho (product concepts/testing/hand-customising/assembly). Both have an extensive track record and are widely respected in the worldwide harmonica scene: Brendan for his continuous flow of inventive harp ideas designed with CAD & made with CNC machines, and André for his expert hands-on reed work, resulting in beautifully finished high-performance custom harps that players love. André and Brendan

Both are also professional-level players, between them covering the primary pucker and tongue-blocking embouchures on diatonic and chromatic harmonicas, and a wide range of musical genres. This means the harps and parts they make are rigorously tested to perform well, regardless of the customer's playing style.

After getting to know each other online, André and Brendan first met up in person in late 2021, quickly finding they had a strong rapport in personality, tech, and music interests. To date they've collaborated informally to produce limited-edition runs of three innovative diatonic harps designed by Brendan: the Modular-Reed Harmonica, the SlipSlider Mk3, and the Overblow-Booster Mk2.

The pair enjoyed the experience of working together so much they've now decided to formalise their tech partnership, under the ‘X-Reed Harmonicas' banner. This site was originally created by Brendan and Hungarian engineer/inventor Zombor Kovács, who teamed up in 2012 for a couple of years. Their combination produced a range of innovative models featuring harmonicas with extra reeds (x-reeds) for extended note bending (see the HISTORY page for info, photos and videos of the harps we produced in this period). After Zombor returned to work doing professional engineering work in Budapest, Brendan continued selling original-design harps/parts on his personal website - brendan-power.com

Now, with Zombor's blessing, Brendan and André are combining their skills to re-launch X-Reed Harmonicas! This time the brand will have a wider focus, but no less ambitious: namely, pushing the boundaries of performance on both standard diatonic and chromatic harmonicas, plus creating entirely new models with enhanced capabilities. They have a bunch of exciting designs in the pipeline, but are launching their partnership with a deceptively simple initial X-Reed Harmonicas product conceived by André and designed by Brendan:

  OB1 CanOB - HOLE 1 OVERBLOW-BOOSTER

A small, universal accessory part that can quickly be added to ANY diatonic harp to enable the player to achieve easy, stable overblows on hole #1 (a problem area on both stock and custom harps).

This is just the start – more ground-breaking X-Reed Harmonicas products coming soon!