Two harps, one car

[emma-graham]

Has anyone ever regularly carried two concert harps in one car? How did you load them in? My duet partner and I always travel separately but we would really like to share the journey to and from our gigs. The two harps are a Lyon and Healy 23 and a Pilgrim Aldburgh. I drive a Volvo XC70 which I think is the bigger of our two cars but we would be prepared to hire something if both harps would fit more easily. We are in the UK so drive on the R. Hand side of the car! We don’t really want to start fiddling about experimenting in case we cock it all up and damage one of our harps!

[kimberly-rowe]

Hi Emma: I’ve put two harps in a station wagon many times. I put the first one in the usual way, with the discs up. Then, VERY carefully, I put the second one in with the discs down, and pad heavily between the two so they are not bumping and the discs are protected. It’s not ideal, but I’ve been very careful and used a lot of padding and never had any problems. The much easier way would be to rent a minivan. Depending on the seating configuration you can usually stow or remove seats to have enough room to load two harps on their column so they don’t touch at all. You still need a lot of padding and ways to secure them so they stay upright and don’t bump each other. Hope this helps!

[Alison]

HI Emma, when I was in Remagen, I saw the shop guys using a Mitsubisi MPC (as Kimberley describes above) with seats removed and they loaded several harps in parallel on their columns because the MPC has internal height of 4ft. So if you hired one with a rear door and took say the RHS seats out from back to front then it might be safe for 2 harps, maybe put mattress etc iin between and more padding against windows. Or ask the UK harp shops for advice.

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

In a Dodge Caravan you can load 4. If you go to the “New Harp Car” thread and read Carl’s posts, you will see how. I could easily put 2 in mine. We have also loaded 2 harps into a Taurus X, both on the non-disc side with lots and lots of padding so no discs were bumped.

[emma-graham]

Thanks everyone. My car is not tall enough to column load and my partners car is not wide enough for two side by side! Looks like we will need to look into rental!

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