Pitch slide when setting levers

[Tara Schoepke]

I have an older Stoney End Lorraine harp, manufactured in the late 90s, with Loveland levers. When I flip the levers, I hear the pitch slide up and down the semitone. This happens on almost all of the strings, it’s only unnoticeable on the highest notes.

Is this normal with Loveland levers, or is it a regulation issue? I’m looking around for a harp upgrade and I don’t want to have this problem with the next one. Would a different lever type on the new harp solve this problem?

Thank you for any advice.

[charles-nix]

Basically that is totally normal. The strings are not supposed to be vibrating when moving a lever, and you move the lever quickly. Every brand I can think of will have some pitch movement as the lever moves over the string, or tightens against the string. Truitts will start sharp of the pitch then slide down–the opposite of Lovelands, but they move faster. Camacs and L&H Performance engage, then slightly sharpen as they tighten. Even pedal harp discs move pitch slightly as the disc engages and tensions the string, but: 1) they are moving very fast because of the pedal action, and 2) it is a lot less than the sharpening/decay of normal plucking.

So, other levers can be better, and will also deaden the strings less. If you’re upgrading to a more modern harp, it probably won’t have Lovelands anyway. They were revolutionary when they came out, and are still the most excellent economy choice, but other all-metal designs damp the sound less and engage more definitively.

[balfour-knight]

Good answer, Charles. Tara, Dusty Strings Harpmakers still use Loveland levers on their harps, but they are beginning to use Camac levers more, as harpists request and expect them. It would have been a deal-breaker when I bought my FH36S if it had not come with Camac levers! There may be other makers out there who also still use the Lovelands, but you can ask and find out before you buy your next harp.

Have a great day,
Balfour

[Tara Schoepke]

Thank you both for your replies. Charles, thank you for all of the good details. Since posting, I read on some website, maybe Rees…that you might actually want to try to muffle the string while changing the lever with Lovelands to minimize this noise so I’m guessing that it might be worse on Loveland. I had to completely aavoid a lever change on a low note once because it was so awful-sounding and I didn’t have time to sit on the string while changing the lever. The ghost of the unwanted B-flat while trying to change to a B natural ruined everything.

I’ve read up on the pros and cons of various levers and have never seen this particular issue mentioned so I guess I won’t expect miracles by changing the type of lever.

[balfour-knight]

Tara, I owned a harp with Loveland levers on it, and the horrible scraping sound they made on the bass wire strings drove me crazy. The Camac levers do not do this, with their ingenious design, and are easy to manage while playing. It is always a good idea to muffle strings that may still be sounding before changing a lever, just like you have to do on a pedal harp, before changing a pedal, especially in the Bass. Like Carl Swanson has said, we do a lot of slight-of-hand when we play a harp, ha, ha!

[charles-nix]

Balfour, that scraping sound on wound strings _is_ annoying. It doesn’t help that the factory sizing chart from Loveland doesn’t always produce the best string fit. You may know that Loveland levers have three different brackets: fretted angled down, fretted angled up, and unfretted. And there are around 16 different sized handles, each number for a different diameter string. A little larger number sometimes works more smoothly on wound strings. I have had success with smoothing and enlarging the groove sometimes also.

Another cause of the scraping is if the lever is slightly mis-mounted, or rotated, or pulls the string even a little to one side as it engages. So, one noisy string usually has a definite cause, but there is always some noise on wound strings.

I’ve been wanting to see the Delacour and Teifi levers in person, but haven’t yet. Teifi, after an initial public selling, now seems to be producing only for their own instruments. Both are expensive.

[Gregg Bailey]

Hi, Tara, Balfour, and Charles,

I have a Dusty Strings Boulevard that I purchased new last year, and it has Loveland levers. I’m wondering if Lovelands have improved over the years, because I don’t notice much of this problem. I hear it very slightly in the bass wires, but it’s not bad at all down there, and I hardly hear any noise like that in the mid or treble.

As of a few months ago, the Boulevard model is now offered with Camac levers as an option, but when I purchased mine, they weren’t yet offering Camac levers for the Boulevard.

Tara, please let us know what you(‘ve) decide(d) to do!

-Gregg

[charles-nix]

Gregg, with the stringing on the Boulevard, you would not hear any scraping sound, except in the bass, as you noted.

The Lovelands do have a pitch slide up if engaged while the string is vibrating, OR if they are not fitted and aligned correctly, and part of the nose of the lever bumps the string before the groove engages. The solution is drop a finger and damp the string on the way to the lever.

They will also scrape on wound strings. In the case of the Boulevard, only the low 8 are wound. Your large guts (instead of the more common Nylon/nylon on most folk harps) won’t scrape. And if the groove sizes are chosen correctly, there is only a slight scrape sound. But it can be a lot worse if misaligned or mis-sized.

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