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Thanks for this useful input – I had been wondering who pays for insurance on a rental harp. You get your customers to do it, I guess? Good advice!
It’s always a worry with hire harps – even at three months’ rent it would be cheap at the price…
One thing you *can* carry with you is all our good wishes, hopes and prayers that you find safe harbour, and can somehow be reunited with your family and your beloved harp. You’re never far from our thoughts, dear Basel. God speed until you are able to say Hello again.
Yes, I guess so too. But it would actually be more helpful if I could get some idea before that becomes necessary – which means a timeframe to judge whether they’re likely to be faulty or not – so I can get onto the shop and arrange to return them against credit if need be. I would prefer to avert the problem rather than just lose out. And it will be easier to do that with UNused strings.
Can anybody tell me when the Bow Brand problem started? I haven’t bought any very lately, but am now regarding my spare string packets with cold suspicion and wondering which of them contain time bombs. How long did the defective period go on for?
Just some further information about the Victor Salvi Harp Museum, which I think you will find interesting, whatever you decide to do:
Museo dell’Arpa Victor Salvi
Via Rossana, 7, Piasco, Italy
Tel: + 39 0175 2705101http://www.museodellarpavictorsalvi.it/it/?s=0
(www.museodellarpavictorsalvi.it)
There is a downloadable PDF here:
If Howard says two octaves light for an early 19th century empire-style, then I’m quite happy to be corrected! He’s a recognised expert.
You really will need to get to grips with the concept of octaves and note-names, though, if you’re planning to play this (or any) harp. And if not, please follow Tacye’s excellent idea of putting on *very* light strings, even nylon, which only need to be taut enough to get the bends out of them; and don’t risk damage from over-tension. I second everything she has written, and have the same views myself. There’s not much more either of us can say.
You need professional advice from someone experienced in restoring antique pedal harps (quite different from today’s instruments in a number of ways), which are very fragile and vulnerable. As suggested, a technician at the Salvi Museum would be an excellent person to ask. The fact that two octaves lighter than what is normally used on modern harps has been recommended by an authority in the field shows you how great the difference in their strength is. I’m worried that if proper care is not taken, you could end up with no harp at all.
This is the second time in two days I’ve recommended this, but try asking this very interesting question in the Yahoo group AntiquePedalHarps (though you have to join in order to be able to post). This list is pretty quiet, but they’re a knowledgeable bunch:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/AntiquePedalHarps/info
I would love to know the answers and am sorry I can’t help more –
What a lovely-sounding harp! Lucky you… (Please make sure it’s strong enough to take *any* strings before you try to put them on. If it isn’t, the tension they add could break your harp.)
Write to Mike Baldwin (who is based in England) to see if he can help you to source the pegs, and you might also ask for his input on stringing. I believe that commercially-bought octave-light gut would be about right, and this would save you having to calculate gauges. I thought Bow Brand (Salvi) published a table of their string gauges online, but have not been able to find it. If I do manage to run it down I’ll post a link. It should give a pretty clear idea of what thickness you’d need, as long as you’re careful to calculate for octave-light as I described above.
Also do join that Antique Pedal Harp group on Yahoo that I linked to – a lot of its members are very knowledgeable and helpful. Mike’s website is:
MIKE BALDWIN
http://www.downeyharps.com/index.htmlOh dear, if you don’t know anything about harps, should you really be restoring an antique pedal harp? There are so many things you need to be careful of, and if it’s that old (how did you find out its date?) the pedals & discs are likely to have seized up or need a lot of adjusting/repairs. Fortunately on an 1802 Erard it’s a simpler mechanical system (“single action” as opposed to his later “double action”). To be clear, if it really dates from 1802, it is not a Grecian.
What does the capital – the “crown” at the top of the column – look like? Does it have a circle of ram’s heads around it? Or are they winged maidens holding wreaths? (If the latter, then the harp can’t be as old as that, and it would signify a more complex pedal system, which didn’t appear until 1810.) This would be the “Grecian” I mentioned above and which your supplier spoke of. Strings which will suit a Grecian are likely to be too heavy for a single-action. Also, Grecians evolved with the passage of time, so what would be right for one could overpower another.
In any case, you must be sure NOT to use modern concert gauge strings, and even lever-gauge could be too heavy. You need to get gut, and for safety I would string “octave-light” – e.g. put the string that normally goes on the C above middle C (3rd-octave C) down an octave, at middle C position. (The alphabet letters refer to note names / musical pitches – you’ll really need to learn these, but it’s not hard. Any beginner’s piano book or web page will help.)
The best thing would be for you to go by octave number rather than gauges (and don’t buy anything until you’re sure what you’re doing because gut is expensive). Then if you put each string one octave lower than what it says on the packet (as described above) you should at least be in the ballpark. If you’re in Italy, Salvi Harps are probably the best people to contact for *gut* strings (not the bass metal ones, which will require a specialist supplier), as long as you use them an octave lighter as I outlined.
Whatever you do, DON’T attempt to string any of the bass wires until you’re sure what you’re doing! Modern bass strings (such as Salvi would sell) have a steel core, which exerts far too great a pull on the soundboard and neck. You need especially light floss-core wound strings, which can be made to order, though you really have to know what you’re asking for. But I don’t think you should put *any* strings on it until you know if the soundboard/disc-forks/neck are strong enough to take them.
Also please don’t just slap gold paint on it! The whole issue of restoring a two-centuries-old harp is so complicated and delicate that you really REALLY do need to get a professional to advise you. If you make a mistake or do unintentional damage, it could well be irreversible.
There’s another lady in this forum who is very knowledgeable about antique Erards, and she may be along to post here. The only trouble is, it’s beyond the scope of any internet page to give you the sort of guidance you need, if you really know so little about harps as you say. You could try joining the Yahoo group “AntiquePedalHarps” and post your query there. Someone is likely to know where you can get the pegs / tuning pins. (Not sure which of these you mean – pegs would be the little wooden ones that help anchor the string into the soundboard, and tuning pins are metal and fit into a hole drilled through the harmonic curve, which you wind the string onto.) Anyway, try this group:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/AntiquePedalHarps/info
Best of luck!
Carl, I thought they’d allowed for that in their gauging, which is supposed to be slightly thinner to compensate. Anyway, I have used the composites for ten to fifteen years or more, on: a newish concert harp (about 6 years old, so obviously not 10+ years for that one), a Pilgrim pedal harp made in the mid-80s, an oldish Lyon & Healy made in the mid-60s (which has had Savarez on it for 15 years); plus a number of lever harps, one of which is pretty frail but has been strung this way since the mid-to-late 90s (like the Lyon-Healy) and is not moving at all. Trust me, all these harps are fine. I do not, however, use it on my 1837 Erard Grecian (original board), because it’s out of period and I also have that one strung much more lightly, in gut.
Anyway, I’m under the impression that they had calculated and allowed for thickness-vs-tension issue, but can’t supply chapter & verse at the moment. I most certainly DID take this factor into account, however.
Just for info: I’m now logged in on my PC (Sony Vaio laptop, Windows 7) in both Firefox & Chrome. The text doesn’t look ANY bigger or blacker than it ever has, in either of these browsers, but at least on this computer Chrome seems to behave normally.
On the iPad (Safari) the text is absolutely teensy and still too grey for my liking. I can re-size the page easily enough, but then I lose part of it.
Also, on the iPad, when I click on the main Forums home page, the bit of text to the right of each category is only two or three characters wide (i.e. per line), making the column – and hence the page – very long indeed, which means a lot of scrolling just to get to the bottom. But once you click on an individual forum or one of its topics, it’s OK again, apart from being microscopic.
PS: I see the little sticky-out tongue is gone from my Tags box. I kinda miss it…
(@ Hugh 4:25) Nope. Tried reloading the page holding down the shift key and it doesn’t make a bit of difference. I checked the status box under “About” and it sez my Chrome is up to date. (Computer isn’t, though: A MacBook laptop running OSX 10.6.8.) I’ll try my iPad and the PC when I get a chance.
(Hey, why is there a lower-case letter “p” above my Tag box? Looks like something is sticking its tongue out at me! My, I’m a bundle of joy this evening…)
@ Hugh: In that case, can we please please stay with the larger letters and sacrifice the serif font?
(This is in reply to your 4:22 post, not the latest one, which I haven’t read carefully yet… rushing to get this one amended!)
Ack!! Tried it on my other browsers and the print is even *smaller*, though it does seem a little bit blacker, but not by much. And I keep the default point-size set fairly large. (Main browser on my Mac is Safari, plus Firefox, Opera, and Chrome – this last one does not work AT ALL well with Harp Column: full of hangs and repeated asking for password-remembering permission that never seems to register when I click Yes, so the annoying little nag box just keeps surfacing time after time with the same demand. I got this every time I clicked to a new HC page. That may be Chrome’s fault rather than HC’s, though I’ve never seen it behave like that with anything else, and have totally lost the will to spend one more second in there finding out.) I also own a PC running Windows 7, and will give the text-size/colour a test run on its two browsers, Firefox and Chrome (I don’t use IE) when it’s next switched on. Which ain’t gonna be tonight!
My background colour is more off-grey than off-white, but larger letters that are black enough will counteract that.
