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This is good, Charles. I appreciate all your knowledge on this subject. However, I’ve never been fond of Fluorocarbon strings because they always feel rough and hard to my fingers, and they take so long to hold pitch. A friend of mine had a Camac lever harp, and I used to do all the maintenance on it. The carbon strings were expensive and hard to deal with, in my opinion. Also, since Camac harps are already delightfully bright, like my pedal harp, the carbon strings made that lever harp too bright, in my opinion! If it had been my harp, I would have investigated restringing with lever gut or nylon.
Hope Carl enjoys all this information.
Best wishes,
BalfourHere is what I discovered on the website of Dusty Strings:
Can I use these on my pedal harp or my lever harp with pedal gut strings (like the Boulevard)? Yes, but if you are looking for low-stress, we recommend them only for the third octave and above. In our testing, strings in the fourth octave could be anchored with String Buttons, but it was not easy on the hands. With the heaviest strings (fifth octave), we found String Buttons to be more difficult than the standard harper’s knot. In addition, strings thicker than .080” or 2 mm will not fit through the holes.Thanks for the additional information, Gregg. Those rainbow string colors do look pretty, but I bet the traditional colors for harp strings are much easier to see, especially in dim light. My eyes are certainly not getting any younger, ha, ha!
Harp Hugs,
BalfourHello Gregg,
I looked at the Rainbow Harp website, and those strings look very pretty! I believe the colors go like this: R O Y G B I V (Roy G. Biv) red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, & violet, just like the colors of the rainbow. Have they been able to market this harp in the USA yet? I read that their business is up for sale.
Thanks for letting all of us know about this.
Harp Hugs,
BalfourHello again, harpists!
I would still like to hear from anyone who has tried the Dusty string buttons. I heard from one of my harp friends that they are “rather small” but that he likes them overall. My main concern is that they cannot be used for all the strings that need anchors on the harp.
Happy harping all,
BalfourHi Mark,
Thanks for posting all of this information. You guessed very well on those top first-octave gauges, and they are almost like mine. Take a look earlier in this thread on pages 1 and 2 for “lever-harp gauges.” I posted those as “a starting place” and of course, everyone can customize these for their own needs and preferences.
I will be very interested in what you think of the thicker-gauged strings, down through 4th-octave G on the Dusty FH36B. Because those particular strings are shorter than some lever harps down there, the gauges need to be thicker than what I posted for traditional lever harps, I imagine. Also, let me know if you try them in the 5th octave. I have never been fond of the nylon over nylon wrapped strings, and I would love it if the NGH Nylgut could replace those.
Happy stringing!
BalfourUpdate! My New Nylgut NGH strings made it a year on my pedal harp without any breaking except one, the top 0G. They still sound as good as they did a year ago, and maybe even better now that they are fully acclimated on the harp. They hold tune better than any other strings on the harp, which is a delight in those high octaves! Let me know your experiences with them, and you can find detailed gauge selection charts for pedal and lever harps on this thread, if you look back at my posts.
Best wishes,
BalfourMark, do you use the new Nylgut NGH strings all the way to the top of your Dusty harps? If you don’t, you certainly could do that. On my FH36S, strung in nylon, I use pedal harp nylon made by D’Addario for the top eleven strings. They are graduated nicely in a separate gauge for each string, of course, and that makes them more even-tensioned and to me, makes for a better tone than having four or five strings per gauge, like lever harps usually have. Most folks do not know that the top of Dusty FH36 harps have pedal harp tension. Counting the top C as no. 1, the first 11 strings have pedal tension. Lower than that, the strings become thinner than pedal strings, so the thicker gauged pedal strings would put too much tension on the harp.
Best wishes,
Balfour
