Whoops, wrong harp!

[unknown-user]

My first harp was a Brittany which I bought after checking with most of you people and following your kind advice not to buy any Pakistani harps off of Ebay. I live the little Brittany but the lady who sold it to me warned me that, if I had any liking for it, I would soon feel the string shortage. She was right, and whilst I have the little Brittany (and love it) I was lucky to find an old Troubadour which I really love (except the levers).

Evangeline, you have my sympathies over the dollar store recorders. Ugh! hee hee. They are unplayable. I was so lucky that way, when I leanrt recorder back in the stone age my Father took me to this super neat old music strore in these Dickensian buildings (just like the stores in the Alistair Simms Christmas Carol. We lived in England, my homeland, at that time) and bought me a really good recorder made by the Dolmetsch Co. When I was an adult and my puppy chewed it I was so upset that I had to go and find an identical one on (the then very new) Ebay.

[sherry-lenox]

If any of you have fibromyalgia, or know someone who does, you may be familiar with “fibrofog”, the brain freeze that causes otherwise normal people to turn into zombies at annoying moments.

THIS is what I’m most concerned about right now with buying a harp. Yesterday it was unseasonably warm on the US northeastern coast. I had a great lesson and felt just fine. By last night, the barometer had fallen or risen or whatever it does, and I was aching like a tooth from head to toe and some invisible gremlins were poking broom handles into me. So that’s really why I’m struggling.

When I’m feeling well, I enjoy the harps I usually have access to. It’s when I feel terrible that I need a harp with low string tension, bass strings not made of big hard wires, and even a narrower reach from high to low.

So it wasn’t simply being capricious about this topic that caused me to bump this post up, but I then promptly forgot what I was talking about. Fortunately it doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it can produce embarrassing results.

So I continue to search.

[Jerusha Amado]

Kay,

My Thormahlen Cygnet had a lovely tone but not a lot of projection capabilities.

[jennifer-buehler]

Is there any way you can rent a lower tension harp for a while?

[unknown-user]

That’s actually great advice Jennifer. I actually have a neck injury and when I first started playing again I bought a light strung lever harp, it was my physio harp.

With time, as I gained strength, I found that playing gradually upset my neck less and i went to a L&H 85 E. Smaller and lighter – also lighter in tension – to my Salvi concert grand. I went over to the 85 E gradually, and still had days where I had “flair ups”

[Author]

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