Gut strings: high maintenance vs nylon (and fluorocarbon)?

[Gregg Bailey]

Hi, drkatt,

Forgive me for being nearly 6 years late to this thread, but, did you end up getting a harp, and, if so, what make/model/string type? At present, my only harp experience is with my 2nd-hand L&H Troubadour V, which is strung mostly in pedal-tension nylon with only 5 pedal gut strings (5th octave) per the original factory string diagram. I’m wanting to purchase a much lighter weight harp that still has pedal tension. I’m therefore seriously considering the Boulevard, but I have the same reservations as you cited in your post here in 2015 about not wanting the headache of constantly replacing gut strings. I live in West Texas with chronically-low humidity, and there’s no harp store of which I’m aware in a radius of thousands of miles! I’m curious to know what you ended up getting and how you like it.

[wil-weten]

Hi Gregg, Camac sells pedal tension nylgut. This is supposed to sound more or less as natural gut and has about the same diameters for the same tension as natural gut.

It is hardly sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity and it’s way much cheaper than natural gut.

In the beginning, these strings stretch a lot, more than natural gut, so you would need to give these strings some time to become stable and produce their best sound.

These strings are a bit less rich in tone, though, which is most audible iin the lower strings. Frankly, I really ike them on my L&H Prelude from the highest notes until the central C. Below that they still sound OK, but I prefer natural gut there, or perhaps fluorocarbon, but that would mean tp have the levers regulated as these carbon strings are thinner than gut with the same tension.

I tested the sound by putting nylgut strings between natural gut strings and listening in what way they sounded different from the neighbouring strings.

[Gregg Bailey]

Thanks, Wil! By the way, (and I’m sure you get this a lot), your username always makes me think of the actor Wil Wheaton; is that intentional?

[wil-weten]

Hi Greg, no, never heard of him. My nick is Dutch for Want(s) to Know. In Dutch, ‘Wil’ is a rather common girl’s name.

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