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And I should mention that I myself don’t own a dusty. But I’d never ever try to discourage anyone from buying one, because they are splendid little harps. Of course a ravenna is not in the same league as an 36 string stave back, but in its range it is an excellent option.
>nd there is a good reason why their harps are cheaper, because the craftsmanship simply does not compare to those of the other harp makers.
I have to take issue with that. Dusty makes excellent consistent harps, which is why they are so popular. You may prefer a more “handcrafted” sort of instruments, but it’s not fair to diss the quality of dustys. It’s a taste thing, not an objective thing. And dusty’s support is superb and then some.
I agree. The other makers also make good harps, but I wouldn’t say that in that price range they are “superior”, just different.
While I don’t love loveland levers for the most part, they work very well on the dustys. I wouldn’t be concerned about them for use on the Ravenna–they’re just fine. It’s on gut and higher tensioned harps where their performance is lackluster.
Burgundy is the name for a category of gut string that Vanderbilt used to sell . They are natural gut seconds, not synthetic. There are synthetic gut strings, like the Savarez brand, but I would do a search here for other threads about them before ordering, just so you know what you’re getting into.
It would be an excellent idea to find a teacher before buying a harp. For one thing, many teachers (at least in the US) either have instruments they rent out inexpensively to students or know where you can do this. It’s a good idea to play a while before you buy; you’ll have a much better idea of what works for you when you’re ready to spend the money.
Yes, having more accidentals is a main reason for playing double strung, but the double strung harps that are strung in two parallel rows (as opposed to the cross strung harp) usually have a full set of levers on each row, so that you can have, say, F# on one side and F natural on the other, making it much easier (aside from the innate technical difficulties presented by two rows of strings) to play something like, say, the Albeniz Leyenda.
Geri, if you are considering a double strung, I would definitely defer to the harp maker about what kind of levers they prefer, if they don’t give you a choice. Some makers do.
As a general rule, wire harps don’t have any of the kinds of levers you’ve mentioned, although there are blade levers for wire. But the levers designed for gut/nylon stringing would break wire in short order.
Liam, these days I play the lever harp primarily, but I am by no means a harper–I don’t do celtic at all, except when requested. Does that still make me a “harper”?
Where would you put someone like Anne Marie O’Farrell, who plays the lever harp and does play Celtic music extremely well, but whose last album was an all Bach recording?
Or someone like John Manno, who plays French Baroque music on a lever harp. Is he a harper, too?
I still say that nowadays you can’t classify people by their semitone mechanism. Not anymore. A mechanism is a mechanism, not a musical fence to rope people off into categories, although there are a great many people with harps (to avoid the harpist/harper thing) who still don’t get that, regardless of which way they make their sharps and flats.
