new levers

[bernhard-schmidt]

Hello,
From my harpmaker friend Allen Shiers I received the information that the new mechanisms for Lever harps are available.
Certainly this become the new standard.

http://www.harfenbau.de/de/detail.html

Best Regards

Bernhard Schmidt
Harpmaker

 

[carl-swanson]

I would love to see a photo showing the baseplate that is screwed to the neck. From the picture on the site now, it appears that the holes in the baseplate for the screws are not very long, meaning that there is very little to no adjustment possible in the positioning of the baseplate.  This is my main complaint about virtually all levers. There is no way of adjusting the position of the baseplate and therefore no way to regulate the instrument.  I would also like to know what the cost of these levers is.

[Elettaria]

Teifi have commented on this forum a couple of times, though it wasn’t Allan. Here is their page on the new levers, including pricing.

<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Mark Norris is using these levers, too. Do </span>the photos on his site<span style=”font-size: 16px;”> help? There’s a description there too.  He’s charging £180 more per 34 string harp compared to gold-plated Camac levers.</span>

At this year’s festival, there were quite a few of us going from Mark’s room over to the Teifi room to try the new levers. Teifi were very nice about us all scampering straight back to Mark’s afterwards! They seemed like nice levers, lightweight to handle, although I honestly can’t remember the details by now. I’m getting <span style=”font-size: 16px;”>them on my harp. </span>

(Sorry about the borked formatting. It seems to be a problem with Chrome and this forum. If the links don’t work, look up Teifi and Mark Norris and go to their pages on levers.)

[Elettaria]

You can also see them on a harp compared with photos of Camac levers on the same harp here.  They look a lot bigger.  I can see why Mark went for the ball ending, it looks a lot neater, but I’m concerned that the Fs and Cs won’t be visible enough.

[Biagio]

Carl, I have to agree that most if not all levers are a pain.  We go to great lengths to design and build a beautiful instrument and then have to fuss around with 30 or forty of these things.  Lovelands do have a pretty long groove for the screws but they are also time consuming to mount and easily knocked out of alignment.  Those designed as this one is – with two frets – at least keep the string in the same plane when engaged.

I have not had difficulty regulating levers if the instrument is otherwise well designed and the technician mounted them correctly, but I do agree that longer grooves would be a blessing.  Peter Brough’s levers were great for that but alas, Peter has retired.  I really wish that someone would buy the patent from him.

Biagio

[teifiharps]

Following on from Carl’s observations regarding the length of the slots for vertical adjustments of our new semi tones. The slots are 8mm long and since the screw 3mm in diameter there ought to be 5 mm to adjust with. I normally fit them with the maximum adjustment possible in the vertical position(towards the bridge pin) since the speaking length of the string gets shorter as the sound board rises over time, and that’s usually the direction needed.  If it proves to be a problem we could extend the slots providing access to the screws is not frustrating.I think these feedback forums are a great way to listen and learn from makers and players alike.

Regards

Allan

[Author]

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