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One big difference between a Salzedo model and a 23 is the overall weight. The Salzedo model is the heaviest model that Lyon & Healy makes. If you are on the short side, it will be heavy against your shoulder as well as heavy to move in and out of a car.
Well the problem seems to be solved!! For the moment at least. By a process of elimination, my web designer tracked it down to Godaddy, which holds the domain name. Hopefully this won’t happen again.
Odd Gretchen- When I click on those links above, I get to my web site. Also, when I type the link(www.swansonharp.com) into the bar at the top of the page, I can get to my site. It’s just when I use google(and there may be other search engines as well), that I get sent to the gambling page. My web designer is still trying to figure out where the problem is. You can bet that there are many other legitimate sites that have been hijacked like mine.
Well I just tried again, and if I type Swanson Harp Company into the Google search engine, what I’m sent to is an online gambling site. But if I use ASK(which is another search engine) then I get sent to my web site. So the problem seems to be with Google. I wonder how many (thousands) of sites are having the same problem?!
Balfour- If you look into the bottom of the harp, the pedals are bundled together in two groups. One group is B, C, and D, and the other is E, F, G, and A. The pedal bars of the two groups cross each other over the hole in the lower end of the column where the rods go in, and as a result, the E rod is between the B and C rods.
For many years the order of the rods at the bottom end, which never changes, was not the same as the order of the linkage chains within the action, and as a result, rods had to cross each other within the column. But now most if not all companies have the linkage inside the action in the same order as the rods, so there are no longer any crossovers.
Balfour- I wasn’t talking about the order of the pedals. I was talking about the order of the rods, which is D, C, E, B, F, G, and A. The E rod is between the C and B rods.
They don’t have to redesign the action. They have to change which linkage chains the rods hook into. If the E chain is right next to the front plate, then the E rod attaches to that chain. But if the F chain is right next to the front plate, and the E chain is say next to the back plate, then that rod will have to be moved so it crosses all the other rods and connects to the first chain. And in addition, all of the rods will have to be reconfigured. I just don’t know if any company can do that. Remember, the rods, or cables, have to stay in the same order at the bottom, but what you want will require all of the rods to cross other rods inside the column.
The other way of approaching this would be to talk to them about building you a custom instrument. That way, when they assemble the action, they can build the linkage chains to fit the way you want. But that will be very expensive, if they are willing to do it at all. Just how often do you think you will need that low E?
Whether a harp uses pedal rods or cables, I think it would be difficult to rearrange things so that you can string a harp differently from the way it was intended. But go ahead and ask the people at CAMAC. They might be able to do it. I know that doing it on any other make of harp would be a nightmare. A new tube packet would have to be made up for this. All pedal rods, on all makes of harps, are in the same order down in the pedestal. That order is: D, C, E, B, F, G, A. The order at the top end is dictated by the order of the linkage inside the action. In modern harps, the order of the linkage is the same as the order in the pedal box. But it wasn’t always like that, and so you had to have rods crossing over each other inside the column. That’s what you would have to do on this harp if you strung it differently from the way it was intended.
Shoshonna- The Bochsa Revisited books are available at a variety of places. They are on Amazon, Sheetmusicplus, The Harp Connection, Melody’s Traditional Music, and of course my web site. One of these places may offer cheaper shipping charges. I had to add $12 for any order outside of the United States because of the shipping charge. Within the U.S. the Post Office offers a “media” rate of $2.72 anywhere in the country, including Alaska and Hawaii. But to Canada or overseas the postage jumps to $12. But on the plus side, the whole book is 92 pages, 82 of which are music! So it’s really a good deal.
shoshanna- You might be interested in my new publication from Carl Fischer Music, Bochsa Revisited. It is the first volume(etudes 1 through 20) of Bochsa’s Op. 318, 40 Easy Etudes. It was released about 2 months ago now. It contains 20 original Bochsa Etudes and 20 Etude Variations that I wrote to expand on the original material. There is also 12 pages of text at the beginning explaining effective practice techniques and why etudes are so effective at building technique. There is also a small description of the technical points in each etude.
Best of all is the edition itself. This is the first time in at least 100 years that these etudes have been re-engraved, and I had them engraved over two pages instead of one the way all other editions of these etudes are. Also, all of the pedals are marked in letters that are large enough to read from 10 feet away! And it’s spiral-bound, so it stays open. There is an edition for pedal harp, and another edition for lever harp. If you go to my web site, http://www.swansonharp.com, you can download samples of many of the etudes and etude variations.
Tacye- Leather was always used on Erard and similar 19th century harps. But those harps had much lighter pedals. Erard Gothique harps have very light pedals. All 20th century harps, because of the changes to the mechanism, are much heavier by comparison. I suspect that when Lyon & Healy started selling pedal harps in 1889, the first harps may have been wrapped in leather. But there would have been complaining about the noise, and so piano bushing cloth was then used. Erard harps still need to be wrapped in leather because the slightest change in the thickness of the wrapping can really throw the regulation off. Not so with 20th century harps.
As I mentioned above, some harps really tear up felts very fast and others do not. But if you are not sure to have your harp gone over annually by a technician I think it’s better to have him change the felts each time he is there. It’s not that much more work nor expense.
Charles- Some harps tear through felts quickly and others do not. The old Lyon & Healy that I keep for myself NEVER wears out felts. I finally changed them this past summer. I think it had been 10 years since I last changed them. And I went through periods of heavy practicing on that harp.
I always change felts when I regulate a harp, even if they are in pretty good condition. I do it because it is anybody’s guess when a technician will regulate that harp again. When I wrap the felts on, I do not use the rubber liner, and I wrap the felt on as tightly as I can to minimize packing down.
I have to tell you a funny story. Years ago I was doing regulations in New York City, and while I was there the harpist playing Chorus Line asked me to regulate her harp. I met her at the Schubert Theater, she took me down to the pit, and I regulated a very old beat up style 30. Fine.
Several years later I was again in NYC, and the same harpist called me to again regulate her harp at the Schubert. She took me down to the pit, helped me clear an area to work, and then left to do errands. I immediately laid the harp over on its side, took the pedestal off, and saw that the felts were worn down to the steel bar! But I could tell that they were my felts that I had put on two or three years earlier. So I changed all of the felts, put the pedestal back on, and started to check for over motion. None of the pedals would go into sharp!!! They would go about half way between natural and sharp and just stop! What the heck am I doing wrong I thought. I finally figured out that somebody else had adjusted the rods to the worn felts, shortening all of the rods by 8 to 10 full turns!!! Once I screwed the couplers out sufficiently, everything worked fine.
When the harpist came back, I asked her if someone else had worked on the harp since the last time I was there. Thinking I was jealous, she said apologetically that she was used to using anyone who came through New York, and that she had used X(I won’t mention his name). This jerk had regulated her harp and either didn’t have any felt or was too lazy to replace the severely worn felts, and so had shortened all of the rods by a drastic amount. This same technician also pedals himself as a rebuilder, and I have had to rip out several repair jobs he has done and redo them. In my book he’s totally incompetent and a con man!
The person in question is NOT Tom Bell. Tom is a very fine technician and a good friend of mine.
Gretchen- If you or someone else can provide a link to the Godefroid text, I’d be happy to read it and either translate or summarize it. I’ve got piles of old music and method books here. But I don’t think I have one by Godefroid. I’ll look, but I’m not hopeful.
Aaron- Absolutely no offense at all. Hasselmans taught virtually all of the 20th century virtuosos and established the method that virtually all harpists use to play the harp. And please, to all the Salzedo harpists out there reading this: Salzedo did NOT play using Salzedo method. Many harpists who knew and studied with him told me he played the way he was taught, with solid French method!
