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Kreig- Thanks for that. I’m still worried that this stuff could gum up the action so that it eventually moves like a freight elevator. That can happen, and very often does, on old actions that are lubricated with standard lubricants that have dried up. And of course, eventually this stuff will do the same thing. Also, in order for this stuff to work, it has to creep into the joint between the rivet and the hole wall, and that’s very hard to accomplish unless this stuff is very liquid when you first put it on. But what the heck. If someone wants to try it, let’s see what happens. I’ll be very curious to hear about the results.
Sylvia- The trick is going to be to get this stuff on the rivets in the main action, which may be where most if not all the clicks are coming from. In fact, it could be one particular rivet in the main action(in each line) that is the problem. The main action is difficult to reach. Let me know how this works out. I’ve never heard of fixing worn rivets in this way and to be honest i have my doubts.
Do you spray it on? Or apply it with a palate knife? The thing about worn riveting is that, when the action is clicky, the problem can be one rivet in the main action or all the rivets in the whole mechanism, and both will sound the same. So if you put it on a few rivets, things will not get better until you deal with all the rivets that are clicking. It’s hard to believe that this stuff will stop the clicking, and that it won’t cause the action, over time, to become sluggish. But let me know how it turns out.
I should mention too that it’s possible for clicks to come from the pedal couplers if they are loose on the rods, or from the pedal fulcrums if things are loose there. There are a lot of moving parts on a harp, and any one of them can be the source of the clicking you are hearing.
Diane- Very good comments. It reminded me of an incident many years ago when I was living in Paris. I did a lot of choral singing when I was younger and there was a choir at the American church that needed a choir director. I told someone that I really wanted to do this and i’d even be willing to do it for free just to get the experience. “Don’t you dare!” the person said. “If you don’t put a value on your talents and skills, nobody else will.”
David- In 1984 Maxmillian Schell made a film biography of Marlene Dietrich. She participated, but only for voice overs, and would not allow herself to be seen. Throughout the movie you hear Schell and Dietrich talking in voice over, and occasionally he says to her “I wish you would let me show you.” Each time she answers “It’s not in the contract!!!” That has to be your response from now on.
David- I think the only answer to your wedding-from-hell gig is to make sure you have a well written contract that covers all the bases, so that when someone makes a last minute demand or tries to rip you apart in the middle of the gig, your response is simply “It’s not in the contract.” If the person throwing the fit continues, even just verbally, I would immediately pull out my cell phone and call 911.
Reriveting an action involves completely disassembling the action, punching out the worn rivets, reaming out the holes in the linkage to a slightly larger size to make them round again, and installing new rivets. That’s the short explanation.
There are two reasons to increase the hole size as little as possible. One is that it will hopefully leave plenty of material on the link so that someday the harp can be reriveted again. The other reason is that larger rivets wear quicker than smaller ones. The larger the rivet size, the quicker it will wear out again. This is because of the increased surface area.
Having reriveted many actions over the years, I have been appalled at the rivet sizes that were used on actions by some other technicians when the harp had previously been reriveted. Let me give you and example. Lyon & Healy has always used a rivet size of .075(seventy five thousands of an inch) for the larger rivets in it’s actions, and .063 for the smaller ones in the treble end of the action. When I rerivet an action that has never been reriveted before, I can usually get away with an increase of about .006(six thousands of an inch) to get the hole round again. So the increase is from .075 to .081. But many times I have opened up an action to find rivets that are .096 or larger. I know for certain that it was not necessary to use such large rivets to correct the problem. But at least one technician who I knew well told me that he always used .096 rivets when he reriveted an action, regardless of the size of the original rivets. “I know they wear out faster,” he told me. “I just like working with them.” I was dumbfounded.
A particular problem are the Lyon & Healy harps built between 1958 and 1981, which had teflon in the action. The rivet size was still .075, but because of the teflon donut surrounding the rivet, the hole in the link had to be drilled to .103. So removing the teflon from these actions usually means installing a .103 or larger rivet. I have come up with a system for dealing with these teflon actions, and also actions that are “riveted out” that allows me to use a replacement rivet of .0625, which is the size that Wurlitzer used. Because of this smaller rivet size, Wurlitzer actions last much MUCH longer before needing reriveting. It was exactly for that reason that I used the same size rivet in my Swanson harps.
I don’t think there is any particular problem in reriveting an Aoyama harp. The only harps where you never rerivet the action and instead replace it are Salvis.
David- Did your contract have an overtime clause? Did your contract state how long you would play/be available for the amount of money they initially paid? I’m not saying this was your fault. It wasn’t. But that would have been your best defense, that you had done what the contract called for and if they wanted more music, the contract clearly stated the terms and conditions for that.
Dwyn- I have to disagree with you on this. Firstly, the vast majority of people(brides) who hire a harpist assume that a harpist is a harpist is a harpist, meaning that they all play exactly the same way. Remember, this is probably the only time any of these people have hired a musician or ever will. Secondly, that two hour gig, under the best of circumstances(the church is 5 minutes from the harpists house) is going to take a total of 4 hours to do. So that harpist is going to earn less than a cleaning lady for the same amount of time, AND, has to lay out money for gas, insurance, upkeep on the harp and car, wardrobe, plus put in extra hours just to be able to play the instrument. So in fact, the harpist who is playing a 2 hour gig for $75 is at best playing for maybe $10 an hour in terms of profit. And once the harpist or harpists in any given area start playing gigs for that money, then that becomes the norm. Everyone will expect to pay that amount. If playing the harp professionally has come to this-$75 for a two hour gig- then it’s time to retrain for some other profession, because anyone doing this to make a living is on a downward economic spiral.
If the action is clicking, then it means that the rivets that hold everything in the action together and the holes they are in are worn and need to be replaced. There is nothing that you can do to quiet the clicking short of overhauling the action.
Congratulations Andy. I think you’re going to be surprised at how fast 14 shelves fill up. Start looking for the next music cabinet now!
I wonder if it is worth trying to educate the potential client about pricing. If I were a working harpist, I think my approach would be to emphasize that TIME IS MONEY. In other words, let the client know that, from the moment that you start loading your equipment into the car for the gig to the moment when you are home again and everything is unloaded, the amount of time involved is____ hours. So it doesn’t matter to you if you have to play one song or the whole service, the time involved is the same.
Maybe the way to price these jobs is to start by telling the client how much time is involved, as described above, and that you charge X dollars per hour. Not per hour of playing time, but per hour of time taken up for the whole gig. And give them a low hourly figure: maybe $45 or $50 per hour. Then, explain that there is an equipment rental fee on top of that. The harp, music stand, bench, amplifier, etc. are charged separately at X dollars for the job. Maybe breaking the whole thing down into smaller bits that they can understand will 1) Make your fee look logical and reasonable, and 2) make their offer of $100 for ‘one song’ look idiotic, without coming out and saying it.
Kreig- It’s really easy to use and it’s also easy to add new pieces to the master list. Much of the music I own I inherited from other harpists and it’s very fragile. So it needs to be very well protected(the envelopes and the drawers) and it also needs to lay flat. Years ago I was given almost all of the music Tournier ever wrote, and it’s all clean. I don’t think the harpist who gave it to me ever used most of it. But the paper is very fragile and I can’t work directly from the original publication. So when I want to use one of these pieces, I make a photocopy and work from that, leaving the originals in their pristine condition.
I bought a bunch of large oversize manila envelopes, probably 11 by 17. I put about a half inch of music similar in size in each one and wrote the names of the pieces on the outside. I number each one of the envelopes. Then I typed up a master list of all the pieces with the number of the envelope next to each title. When I finally had music cabinets made-a bunch of shallow drawers large enough to hold the envelopes- I just put the envelopes in the drawers and put the number of the envelope on the outside of the drawer. When I want a piece of music, I just find it on the master list and see what drawer it is in. It’s worked very well.
