Questions For "Other" Instrumentalists

Great question, Bill ... we've missed you, because no one can start a conversation like you can! My question is for harmonica players:

How can anyone play one without pouring drool through it?

I can't get through a song without needing a towel and a bib, and need to take them for Rust Check treatment as a result.

Steel drum tuning is a huge pain and involves hammers and crowbars. You don't regularly retune them like you do a guitar. Takes a lot of skill and experience.

Thanks, Doug and everyone - for the replies. I had always thought of the accordion as being a very difficult instrument with all the back and forth pushing, the piano keys and the other keys as well as the singing, but have never actually held one or spoken with a player, so Roger that was a most interesting link.

I guess when one considers the harmonica - it also being a reed instrument - all that SLAWBR has to go somewhere, right? (Anyone catch a song reference in those capital letters?), but I've never seen a bib, TFN, just a lot of old black gentlemen forcefully striking it onto the sides of their hands. Easy to play along with guitar? Just a minimum of chords available, right, on a blues harp? I know there are some very fancy ones with slides and stuff, but if I were to play a harmonica with guitar it would be just a simple Hohner.

As for the steel drums, I've never actually priced one lately, BGD. but I've always thought they'd be expensive and the players having something akin to perfect pitch - there being so many sharps, flats major and minor notes available. Any of you drummers thinking what I'm thinking? I'll leave those drums alone and just play the ones with one note, thanks!

Bill