Fishing line does work!!!

[leon-ducommun-dit-verron]

In previous posts I said about how I bought an old grecian harp for purely decorative purposes. I did buy some grecian strings from morley to replace the missing ones ( most of them) but I gave up as it was making the sound board bow terribly and was making some very unhealthy noises.
In the end I bought some different thickness carp fishing line . It has similar diameter thickness to the correct harp gut wire. This was purely for cosmetics!!!
I have strung up the whole thing – plus you can get fishing line in white, red and blue! And for £5 for 20 meters. I put a tiny bit of tension on the strings- it was ok! Then I put more and more. It’s now totally tuned up with no bow in the soundboard what so ever. It actually makes a nice sound!
Now I’m not saying everyone should buy fishing line from now on but for people in the same situation as I was with the old harp maybe it might be a consideration!!

[tracey-kjonegaard]

This is awesome hahah, what kind of sound does it make compared to regular gut and wire harp strings?

[lyn-boundy]

Sounds as if you’ve got it sorted just in time for a Xmas rendition of Cod Rest ye Merry Gentlemen or Hake the Herald Angels Sing. (My sincere apologies for opening the door to a million bad fish-based puns.)

[leon-ducommun-dit-verron]

It sounds virtually identical!!! Tunes up well too.

[bernhard-schmidt]

The Extruder -the machine who produces the Line- don’t care if it is used for fishing or stringing Instrument or toothbrush. It’s all up on big coils.

And, if you go over to the Tennis People you might find the carbon.

[leon-ducommun-dit-verron]

Does make you wonder why a single string can cost £20 when in fishing line the whole harp can be done for that ! The mark up must be huge .

[Tacye]

Firstly, if you are going to compare string prices for a mark up you really need to compare the same material, not nylon with gut strings. Just on the nylon, it is extruded in only a few thicknesses, relatively, and proper harp strings are ‘rectified’ polished down to a different thickness for each note and I believe are also rounder than fishing line. This will make it sound better – or less bad anyway, I really prefer gut! There will be a mark up for not buying 20m a time and labelling it, but not as great as you say.

Fishing line is a perfectly fine idea if you are not going to play the harp seriously and want it more for cosmetics, but harpists aren’t just madly throwing money away on our more expensive proper strings.

[Allison Stevick]

Lyn- good one! I’m chuckling. Gotta love a good pun! 😉

[patricia-jaeger]

When harp strings are prepared to be sold as such, I understood that they are passed through a diamond die so that they are perfectly cylindrical and therefore the sound vibrations they produce are more perfect and regular than would be the case with fishing line. Will someone inside the string industry comment here?

[bernhard-schmidt]

I’m not from the Industrie but I can say for sure that it is true that the raw string material is beeing rectified to the required Diameter at least it belongs to the manufacturer. But the raw material Comes in much different sizes.
There are different possibilities to do the rectifing.
If this would be not done….the strings overtones wouldn’t Sound good because of the Inequality mass. There is a expression here in Germany its called > a string is not clean with the QUINTout of the 5.<

Regards

[Loonatik]

Yes, I remember using fishing lines too for some instruments when I started playing music long time ago. Remembered they don’t ring as long though and faced some difficulties with harmonics but otherwise worked perfectly.

[emma-graham]

I once had a top D string keep breaking each time I replaced it – must have been a dud. my Dad gave me some fluorescent yellow fishing line, which he measured as being the same diameter, so I popped it on just to get me through until a new string arrived. It sounded fine and people kept asking what the significance of the yellow string was. I was quite sad to see it go!

[Author]

Posts