Review of Stoney End "Esabelle" cross-strung harp

[adam-b-harris]

For those of you that are interested in cross strung, I have done a review of this instrument.

regards
Adam

[Janis Cortese]

Thank you — I can’t wait to watch this tonight.

[mae-mcallister]

Thanks for that! I have a double-strung Stoney End on order, so not quite the same, but probably similar size and sound, and that was very helpful and informative! I might do a similar one for when mine is built…

[Allison Stevick]

Mae–please do! I’ve been thinking about double strung for a long time and I like Stoney End, but would want to see one in action before I made a choice. 🙂

[Janis Cortese]

Adam, would you be able to add another review after you’ve had this one for a while, talking about maintenance, how well it holds tune, and how well it plays? I’m curious as to what you will think after having it for a while. I still want to get a harp and am leaning toward something like this, but have had to put those plans on a longer-term hold due to having to travel back home to take care of my mom who had some health challenges recently. She’s doing much better, but I need to recover a bit financially before I can go spending a couple BOATs on anything.

Nevertheless, a cross-strung is still among the front-runners when I am finally able to go shopping for real.

[adam-b-harris]

Mae, that would be great. Double string sounds interesting but I didn’t really get the point and a video would be most useful.

In fact, wouldn’t it be great if there was one place where we could access video reviews of different harps. Its not ever going to be like going and checking the instrument out for yourself, but it would be great for people like me that live in remote areas that have no access to harp makers, shops or conventions.

Janis, I can already tell you that it holds its tune pretty well although since I bought it primary for recording purposes I would be checking the tuning every time I am playing it. Maintenance wise, well that is pretty much zilch, which is one reason I bought it as opposed to going down the pedal harp route. (I actually bought it to see how I would go with the fingering, with the intention of getting a bigger one built but finding it to be quite adequate for the things I want to record at the moment).

Living in a remote area, I don’t really want to be bothered with having regular maintenance and regulation procedures done. This made the cross strung an attractive option. The one thing that could become a problem though, particularly if I start playing it outside, is dust. Everything is ok at the moment, but it looks like it would be very difficult to thoroughly dust/clean the part of the soundboard that lies between the two sets of strings.

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