Muzikkoin Hartps – Caveat Emptor

[wil-weten]

Hi Harplynx, I just heard back by mail from HarpColumn that your earlier deleted message has become ‘unspammed’.

I checked it and your original message has appeared again. We can edit our posts, but can’t delete them, so I guess the history of this thread will remain visible for the whole world.

[harplynx]

Thanks for your thorough reply, Biagio. Interesting, informative and important in this context.

I am aware that the stringing prosess is really a matter of ‘mathematics’ and ‘science’ and that an amateur with fishing line can’t manage to match a professional standard like this. That’s not my aim either.

But as an amateur solution, in lack of any other way of solving the paki-problem, I think I have found a tolerable and creative way of making some of these unfortunate harps quite a bit better, and in spite of all; – playable.

My own private harps, on the other hand, are highly professional instruments, I am very picky when it comes to sound. 😀

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by harplynx.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by harplynx.

[harplynx]

Thanks for letting me know, wil-weten.

It’s a pity we can’t tidy up a conversation here by deleting excess comments no longer needed.

[Biagio]

Here’s a tip Harplynx if it would be useful…

It is easy to dye most nylon strings (but not FC which is hydrophobic). My lazy-boy method:

Mix up a batch of concentrated Rit fabric dye, add 2 T salt as mordant and a squirt of soft detergent such as Ivory (to accelerate the absorption) to 2L water, dump that with the strings in a slow cooker set on high and go read a book for a couple of hours (or whatever). Then just rinse the strings off and save the solution for the next time.

Rit retail grade Navy Blue is fine for the Fs; you should use their commercial crimson for Cs. The retail red comes out purple.

I have no doubt that you could make an excellent harp if you wished! Perhaps like me these days it is not worth the bother with so many excellent harps available at reasonable prices:-)

I just enjoyed making the things and hanging around with other luthiers, but eventually it all became more than I wanted to do at an advancing age LOL.

Cheers,
Biagio

[wil-weten]

@ harplynx, if you can write in German, you may like to become active in harfenforum.de too. On that forum one regularly sees questions about improving Pakistani harps too. There is also a subforum where one could write in English at https://www.harfenforum.de/forum/viewforum.php?f=17

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