Delacour Levers – a new star is born

[bernhard-schmidt]

Hi,

Thanks for the reference to my writing error.

Here it is again

Hallo,

From the small French workshop ” Delacour” come outstanding and sophisticated new levers for harps.
You can find these highly developed mechanisms under the original homepage

http://www.delacourlevers.com

Now I found that the company Camac for very strange reasons registered a

[Bonnie Shaljean]

Oh dear!! That’s going to come up in all the Google searches.

I am really surprised that a reputable company would do such a thing – unless there are underlying reasons for it which we don’t know about. If so, it would be interesting to hear them, because offhand I cannot think of anything to justify (what looks like) name hi-jacking.

Ironic that the wrongly-typed link led to a firm which handles intellectual-property rights!

[bernhard-schmidt]

Hi Bonnie,

yes, it was too late …yesterday when I typed the wrong link.
And Yes,

[barbara-brundage]

Still clinging to those silly handles, I see. Sigh. I really didn’t care for these when I tried them in Asheville. Very distracting looking, in-your-face kind of design and hard to see and operate from the player’s perspective.

[Janice Hunter]

I have Delacour levers on my Fisher Eireann and I don’t find the handles silly at all.

They certainly look better than the Camac levers I have on my Triplett Eclipse.

Both levers work really well as far as sound.

[bernhard-schmidt]

Hallo,

I like to pass the information

Camac deleted the page

Thanks for the attention to this information

Regards

[barbara-brundage]

Interesting, Janet. Myabe they’ve made some changes since I saw them, but I thought the fact that the entire lever was colored red or blue for the Cs and Fs gave an effect very like the old red, white and blue plastic levers that L&H used on the Troubadour 2 or 3. Ah well, there are people who find one harp model the most beautiful ever while others look at it and say “Yuck!” so I guess that’s just a taste question.

I tend to use my levers a LOT and I found it extremely difficult to make double changes (one up, the one next to it down), which is not very hard with any other brand of lever. I never had a problem using a fingertip for most lever brands above middle C on most harps, though, so again I suppose it’s just a question of how you’re used to using your levers.

Different strokes, I guess. I can see that they’d probably be fine for something like Celtic music, but unless they were significantly less expensive than Camacs or Truitts, I don’t really see an advantage, but that’s just my opinion.

[Janice Hunter]

Actually my name is Janice.

[barbara-brundage]

>who seem to think that it is a lesser music than Classical

That’s an odd assumption. The mere fact that it’s less chromatic isn’t the same as “lesser”, but it is certainly less chromatic. Does one assume that classical period music is lesser than jazz, then, because jazz is usually more chromatic?

I apologize for mistyping your name.

[Janice Hunter]

You said that the Delacour levers might be fine for “something like Celtic music” and that sounds like you don’t think much of Celtic, but maybe I misunderstood what you meant.

[barbara-brundage]

Yes, I’m sorry it came across that way, Janice. I just meant that it’s a kind of music that needs a lever with a good tone once the lever is engaged (which they do have), more than levers that go zippity-do. I like truitts fine for celtic music, for instance, but not so much for flippy playing.

Incidentally, as far as your comment about people not liking camacs when they first came out, that’s absolutely right. Camac’s first levers were really awful. They’ve been through at least 6 or 7 different lever designs, and I expect they’ll probably change again in the near future. Nobody has a perfect lever yet.

[Oona Linnett]

Hello, I realise that this is an old discussion. But I just wondered if anyone can tell me, would it possible to put Delacour levers on my Pilgrim Ashdown harp? Would there be an issue about them being in a different place to the existing levers, with resulting cosmetic problems due to screw holes having to be filled?

[patricia-jaeger]

Oona, Your question above can best be answered by the engineer John Hoare, at the Pilgrim Harp Company in England.

[Oona Linnett]

Thanks Patricia, I’ll have a chat with them.

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