Malfunctioning harp!!!

[kreig-kitts]

If nothing else, I bet this thread will have a lot of pedal harp shoppers looking underneath to try to check out the rivets.

[mr-s]

Hi Carl , tell me please do Salvi harps has tow companies one in Italy and one iZn USA? or only in USA?

[carl-swanson]

It’s complicated. Maybe somebody could question the Salvi AND the Lyon & Healy people and ask them specific questions about where things are made. I know I have a specific list of questions I’d like answers to.

[Elizabeth-Jane Baldry]

This is very interesting as an identical malfunction has just happened to my harp. The C pedal started clunking moments before a recording session for a feature film score. Immediately following this I had five recitals and two weddings over a ten day period. It was totally nerve-wracking wondering if my harp would let me down during this busy time. The pedal finally gave way the day after the last recital. Thankfully!
A local independent harp technician diagnosed the problem, and yes the rivet in question had simply been press-fitted in place with no hammering out at the ends.
I now have a week to get the harp fixed before nine Christmas events on successive days. It is unthinkable to let people down; I have a lovely old Erard harp I could play on to save the cost of hiring, but all in all, this is highly distressing, at the very first time of year when snow and ice make travel so difficult.

The harp was a top of the range, very expensive,

[carl-swanson]

Eizabeth- This is EXACTLY what I was talking about, and EXACTLY the kind of crisis that an unnecessary problem like this can cause. I hope you will read the riot act to the company who made your harp. This is unconscionable.

[barbara-low]

Rivets aren’t something a harpist would think to bring extra supplies of on a cruise ship!

There’s most likely a machine shop on the ship and a rivet could have been fashioned to make the harp playable for the rest of the cruise. Something to remember if you find yourself in a similar situation.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

The word “clunk” reminds me of a harp I diagnosed. It was clunking between pedal changes. It was perhaps a “thunk.” It wasn’t metal against metal. I finally figured out, after the three top guys from Lyon & Healy looked at it and gave up, that it was only happening when you moved, I think it was going from G-sharp to A-sharp. I therefore deduced that the rod or all the rods were moving at that point and hitting the inside of the column or something like that. Could it have been loose rivets? Perhaps, only it never stopped functioning entirely. This was a Salvi Electra. As far as I know it has never been fixed.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

This thread also begs the question of why no one is simply reproducing the Wurlitzer harps, if they were copies of Lyon & Healy, but are in the public domain, and if they were indeed so good. I think they are heavy sounding, but good workmanship, to be sure.

[deb-l]

Is the quality control issue for this company strictly related to pedal harp mechanisms?

[Peter Wiley]

Facts.
Having worked at Lyon & Healy Harps I can speak with more authority on this than anyone so far.
I am not a lap dog for the company, there are many things that I know and say that make them uncomfortable.

The malfunction in this specific case can be described as a “pedal fulcrum rivet” creep.

[carl-swanson]

-Around 2002 it was found to be slightly less reliable-

Slightly less reliable???? As post number 34 explains, as well as my original post that started this thread, there is nothing ‘slight’ about this problem. It can happen without warning, anywhere and anytime and is not easy to fix in a hurry, and it renders the instrument unplayable from one moment to the next.

Did Lyon & Healy try to contact owners of these harps once they discovered there was a problem? Did they issue a recall and offer to fix this problem BEFORE the harp malfunctioned?

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Thank you, Peter, for bringing some clarity to the discussion.

[Karen Johns]

Ok- here is what stymies me. In your original post, you stated this is happening to harps “less than ten years old”. If

[carl-swanson]

Karen- If Peter’s information is correct- and I have no reason to question it-then the harps with this problem would fall into that 2 year window. The harp I mentioned on my original post was bought by the Cunard line-I’m presuming they bought it brand new)- to put on the Queen Mary II. I believe that was 7 years ago. It’s possible the harp was built a year or more earlier and took that long to sell. I have not seen more recent instruments so don’t know if they have this rivet problem or not. But since I had seen it on a 7 year old instrument, I assumed it was on everything built since then. My mistake.

[Dwyn .]

“I have a pretty good guess as to who this MAJOR COMPANY is. They are literally turning into the Walmart for harps.”

Be fair to Walmart.

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