They say Leo Fender never learned how to really play the instruments that bore his name. Ronnie Schreiber, itinerant TTAC contributor and respected scholar of Detroit’s historical culture, uses that excuse when he explains how he managed to invent and patent an electronic harmonica without ever achieving much more than an enthusiastic novice’s skill with the thing.

I was an early backer of the Harmonicaster idea and I attended the most recent NAMM show as a worker bee at Ronnie’s booth there. Luckily for me, I was off talking to James Trussart when an executive of a major music-store chain stopped by to work a deal with the man himself. You’ll be seeing Harmonicasters out on the street in the near future. Which brings us to this week’s episode of Ask Jack.

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