Wurlitzer Harp Stake Model

[catherine-rogers]

You can regulate your own Camac or any other brand harp. (You can change your own tires, but do you or will you?) But you need to know what you’re doing. It’s just easier to adjust the pedal cables on a Camac (as opposed to rods) because it can be done without removing the base or disengaging the springs. But adjusting discs is not something you do on a whim or without training.

Some of us older harpists (!) were taught by our teachers to do personal regulating in the days before traveling harp technicians, and it doesn’t hurt to know the basics in case of emergency. If you have to replace a broken disc, for example, you’re going to need to regulate that disc to be sure it’s in the right position. Every owner of a pedal harp should have Carl Swanson’s book and read it, even if you never intend to do anything more to your harp than tune it and play it. At least you’ll be able to have an intelligent conversation with the technician who works on your harp. An informed consumer is a safer, wiser consumer.

[barbara-low]

Jerusha,

I had heard that too. I think the Camacs are more user friendly in that 90% of the regulation can be taken care of by the owner, but those disks still need tweaking now and then. I suppose if the owner is brave enough, they could tackle those disks too — I’ve adjusted disks in the past, but it’s truly an art. I’d call in a professional.

[catherine-rogers]

Another advantage to having a pro do it is they do it all the time, so they’re faster and tend to have replacement parts if needed. Of course, there’s no such thing as the perfect harp or the perfect regulation, but if you’re lucky you can come pretty close.

[barbara-low]

To add to my previous post: I haven’t tried to adjust a Camac disk – I’ve only tried to worked on my Lyon and Healy and Salvi.

[unknown-user]

Thanks, Barbara and Catherine!

I really am not a technical person, so the regulating would fall to my engineer/computer wizard husband.

[carl-swanson]

OK everybody!!! All harps have to be regulated from time to time. ALL OF THEM. And while it is a very good idea to understand as much as you can about how the mechanism works, it’s best to have a professional regulate the harp. They can do it faster and much more accurately than you can. They also carry an endless list of spare parts to make the regulation better. So yes, buy my book, A GUIDE FOR HARPISTS, and read it. Learn the standard terms for parts and learn how the whole thing works, and occasionally, do an emergency repair yourself, like changing a rod or a disc, fixing a buzz, etc. But leave the regulating to the professionals.

[barbara-low]

You may also wish to read and save previously published articles from the Harp Column written by Mike Lewis at his website here

http://harptech.com/4Articles/Articles.html

The articles cover how things work on a harp (though not Camacs), and how to’s for replacing pedal rods, disks, strings, strange noises coming from your harp, etc.

[unknown-user]

Carl,

I have a general question about Wurlitzers.

[carl-swanson]

Jerusha,

For the most part, Wurlitzer parts are compatible with Lyo & Healy, and with my Swanson harps. Discs and screws are interchangeable. Since Wurlitzer harps never break rods, that is a non-issue. I’ve never measured the rod diameter of a Wurlitzer, but I’d assume that they match Lyon & Healy and mine as well. I’ve never had any problems finding parts to fit a Wurlitzer action.

[unknown-user]

Thanks, Carl!

[wendyharpwendy]

Does anyone have a link to the Wurlitzer catalog that was va mentioned in a previous post? I can’t seem to fund it. Is it still with patricia Jaeger? I have #1446 a 46 string and am due for a tune up in southern Virginia.

[carl-swanson]

To my knowledge, the Wurlitzer serial number list is lost. It’s a real tragedy. Because we can’t find the serial number list, we don’t know when any particular serial number was made, we don’t know what the Wurlitzer total harp production was. We don’t know what the year to year production was. We don’t know how many of each model they made. I tried years ago to find the Wurlitzer serial number list, without success.

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