i wanted to offer my thoughts and impressions on the few different Chromatic harmonicas i have owned and currently own and use. the only reason for this aside from having a few minutes is that someone may get some good from it. it is not meant to be an expert review but rather just my thoughts and impressions on one style of playing a chromatic. i should preface this all by saying that i'm a 3rd position player on chromatic almost exclusively, with my preference being blues and jazz derived closely from blues, like jump and swing genres.
hohner chrometta: i owned 2 of these, first an 8 hole which i had gotten on a whim and let sit in its box for years after initially noodling with it briefly. i don't remember any good reason for getting it other than maybe curiosity. after some years i realized that some of my harp heroes were playing chromatic. i bought a bigger chrometta, a 12 hole, and began trying to learn how to play like those guys. the chrometta was the first chromatic i made breakthroughs into 3rd position playing with.
a lot of players don't care for this harp. it's bulky and has been accused of being leaky, it's not made like a fine watch, it looks somewhat toy-like. it's also one of the least expensive chromatics out there. add to that the ease one can make a sound come from it thanks to very big holes. i found the chrometta to be a very useful and playable harp. as with any chromatic, drawing or blowing too hard can definitely render one useless. they have double the reeds of a diatonic per hole and windsavers or valves, which are subject to damage from misuse. i would play one of these any time again if i had need and didn't have my usual ones with me. i managed to damage reeds in both of mine a long time ago.
hohner 270: this is one of the industry work horse chromatics. hohner has not made any huge changes in them for a long time. my first was in D which when i look back was a mistake, but if i still had it i know i'd have a use for it in 3rd position with the root key being A. unfortunately i had a wild idea to seal the comb on mine some years ago and took it apart and promptly warped and broke the comb. i could have bought a new comb but was unaware of that at the time so i tossed the remaining parts. recently a fellow harper gave me a 270 in C and i accepted it more to be polite than any love for the brand and model. BUT i have been revisiting the 270, doing some research since i have "grown up" some as a player, and i do like it and actually have more respect and regard for it than i used to! while it is a cantankerous harp in some ways it has a very comforting tone and it's really not so hard to play once one gets used to it. the one i have has a place in my "active" case.
hering 48 series: my first of these was a charlie musselwhite special edition, the 7148, which was a straight up C mid range harmonica. i liked it a lot but wrecked a reed and ordered a replacement comb and plate assembly, which was the same as the 5148 series, and i liked that one as well. again i wrecked a reed. ( do you notice a pattern here? i had yet to learn not to hard bend on a chromatic!) i went on and got a baritono in C, which is a low register chromatic, and i love it to pieces. in addition i got a G 5148 as well, and rather quickly ruined a reed or 2 on it.
Suzuki Chromatix: i bought one of these in G to replace the hering G i had ruined. it's a really fine harp for the price- under $150 about a year ago. i have pretty much learned to treat a chromatic differently these days so as to not kill reeds!
bushman free jazz chromatic: this is a suzuki chromatix with a different name as far as i can tell. it's a good harp and i got a great deal on it when bushman decided to clear them out and get away from the chromatic business. for $50 i got a working middle range C chromatic, well built, plays a bit stiff but i can work with it.
there are a lot more choices in chromatic harps. one can conceivably spend up to $5k or more on one! or at least in the high hundreds. i am just a working guy who can't afford that kind of cash, so i have stayed with the work horse mass production chromatics with good reputations, and i'm fairly satisfied with their performance and affordability.
using chromatic harmonicas has been a challenge for me to learn, especially early on, when i was playing almost exclusively 2nd position on diatonics. i just didn't "get" 3rd position for a long time. once i made the initial breakthrough in my mind, it was a really great move to learn to play that way and incorporate it into my style. some good reasons to play chromatic are that there are so many more options to play a particular song, a much fuller sound, and a big expansion of one's "bag of tricks" as a harp player.
that's my 2 cents. anyone agree, disagree, have questions, want to add or subtract from this short review?