Thank you everybody who has kindly contributed to this post.

My daughter’s teacher suggested we look at 46-47 strings rather than 44 for more complex pieces in the future, seeing that my daughter is likely to be quite tall soon (she is now almost 5’4” at 11).

Since we are not in the US, the harp would have to be ordered unseen/unheard either through the local dealer or by myself. We finally chose to go directly with Venus after months of numerous email messages between me and Denise at Venus. She has been tremendously helpful, always replying to our emails promptly with detailed information and providing us with updates of our 46-string Encore. She sent photos of parts of our harp in progress. She and Wally also tried to find nicely grained curly maple, a little gold crown for the harp, etc, as per my daughter’s requests.

The hours of research we spent in search of the harp have been worthwhile for my daughter. All harp companies, distributors/dealers, and harpists I contacted in Asia and the US were helpful, so are many posts on this Forum. My daughter doesn’t have the chance to try a lot of harps at conventions like in the US. She’s only seen about a dozen of pedal harps in person and played on just a couple of them. I think to witness her own harp in the making through the photos and updates Denise sent makes it more special for her than ordering a ready-made one. We are really excited to get it soon.

Hello,

Since this post has been revived, I would like to