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An older harp can be wonderful, or have problems. And so can a new one. I have seen instruments that had a sound board replacement while still under 5 year warranty.
Would suggest you look at resources available on line about harp maintenance and get Carl Swanson’s book. If you are not confident, have a technician check it out before purchase.
But here’s a brief list of what I would look at:
1) Make sure you love the sound you get when you play it. No point going further if you don’t love it. (But tune it first see #8.)
2) Look at soundboard: is it unduly pulled up (usually around the 5th octave)?
3) When was it last restrung? When last regulated? Did technician give written condition report then?
4) Look _straight_ down from above the neck (need a step ladder probably) at the C sharp disk near the lowest point on the neck curve. Are the prongs fully engaging the string? Is there noticeably less engagement than elsewhere on the neck?
5) Look from behind down the neck. Is it in a plane or warped?
6) Look at the gap between the body and base on both sides, but particularly left side, at the bottom of the sound board. Is there substantially more gap on the left than the right?
7) Vigorously wiggle each pedal from flat to natural, then natural to sharp, while damping the strings with both hands. Do you hear any noise from the action?
8) Tune the instrument. Do any pins seem loose or stick?
9) Are there any cracks on the body, base, soundboard, column, or neck? Investigate as necessary.That’s a brief summary. Again, if you are not comfortable, or don’t understand from the above list, have a good technician inspect for you.
Many harps much older than 1980s are still in use. Newer ones and older ones fail. Much depends on care, geographic location, amount of moving, and just plain luck of which piece of wood was picked up out of the stack for original construction. Wood can have hidden flaws.
Charles Nix
Perhaps the manufacturer would have a good description of the difference in sound: https://manufacturing.dustystrings.com/harps/browse-models/fh36h
Personally, I suspect there is more difference from one harp to another (and one player to another) than choosing based on model or wood species. The most significant difference is how _you_ play. So, you need to play it and listen.
Considering the new cost, and that one regularly sees them listed for more than that amount, it looks like a good price. If it is a good instrument, it likely won’t stay on the market long.
But you need to ask some questions:
Does it have any structural issues?
When was it restrung? (Strings cost about $165 plus installation) When was it regulated? (Regulation is certainly needed if never done)
Is it Loveland or Camac levers?And, most importantly, do you love the sound _you_ can get from the instrument?
Yes, that is really thick for a soundboard, especially at the width it is, and the appearance of a low-tension instrument. Some thickness would have to be added to allow the inlay, but still. Modern pedal harp, with very high tension is not that thick even in the bass wires where it is very wide.
Your intuition that the strings should be different diameters is certainly correct. Consider the top string. If it is in the range of 100-125 mm, the thickness should be around 0.4 or maybe as much as 0.5 mm. 1 mm won’t make a useful sound at that length, especially with a soundboard that thick.
I still suspect that it was always intended to be decorative only. Did the previous owner indicate that it was ever usefully tuned and played?
Beautiful carving. Besides your clear observation of no way to change the strings, a couple of things seem very odd:
1) Why three tuning pegs per string? A triple harp? I can’t see from the photos how they line up vertically with the string holes. Maybe I’m having a dense moment, but I can think of no reason for that many pegs without matching string holes.
2) If you’re measuring accurately, 1 mm is WAY too large for strings in the treble. They would be too stiff to make sound at all. Likewise, 1 mm is way too small for the bass–they would make a sound, but not a good one.
3) Really hard to tell from photos, but the soundboard looks really thick. The photo inside doesn’t look like wood, but fiberglass–or something.
I’m suspecting that it was never a musical instrument but a strictly decorative piece. Maybe someone else will have additional ideas.
Haven’t moved one–but Lyon & Healy shows the size of their shipping carton as 81”x27”x50”. I can’t see that being able to lay flat in any mini van. I wouldn’t want to transport a harp propped up on a wheel well. I would want it flat or standing securely on edge and properly tied off. That will barely fit in my cargo van flat, and won’t go through the 49″ door height of my cargo van.
Can you measure the space available in the mini-van?
Seconding Biagio and Evolene: I’ve not ever seen a totally unbranded harp of any size. It is common for the only marking to be inside, but there should be maker, model, and serial number inside, and sometimes a string chart. The Pakistani harps are sold under a lot of different names, but they are branded. Every other one I have seen is branded and manufactured in house by the maker–or it is based on a Musicmaker’s kit.
New strings should not be breaking. Maybe one faulty one will break when new occasionally. But, if several nylon strings are breaking,
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and you are tuning to correct pitch
, then either you have poor quality nylon, or the string design is too long for its pitch. In either case, it should be a warranty issue.
I’m guessing here–but 100 man hours labor for a very simple 26 string on a one-off by an experienced woodworker with good equipment? Maybe 150-200 man hours for the “first time builder”? I’m just making a guess. If that’s right, your $2000 26 string harp is being built for around minimum wage, not to mention what the equipment and tools cost–and what they cost to maintain.
I haven’t noticed a great rush of people into the harp building field as a way of getting rich quick.
As someone who does have the equipment and knowledge, it is not surprising to me how expensive harps are–it is surprising how inexpensive they are.
I get mine from a harpsichord supplier. Usually it is Instrument Workshop. fortepiano.com
Hubbard Harpsichords would also likely have it.
Be sure you know whether you need yellow brass, red brass, iron (several choices here), z-wire, or music wire.
The sharpsicle and the upper line models are designed so that levers can be added. The difference in price between the sharpsicle (8 levers), flatsicle (11 levers), and fullsicle (26 levers) is exactly $14.67 per lever. From Robinson, the parts alone cost almost half that. I wouldn’t install and regulate them for the difference. It is amazing to me that even in a production situation that Rees can produce the harps for what they sell for.
Far from being a high price, this is cheaper per lever installed and regulated that just the parts alone for almost any other lever.
The harpsicle is specifically marketed as not being upgradable. It has no bridge pins (26 more holes to drill, 26 pins to purchase, 26 pins to regulate). That accounts for about $100 of savings in the harpsicle versus the upper line instruments.
All of the harps with any levers at all can have levers added, and are specifically marketed as such on their website. The key is: to have any levers, you must have bridge pins on all strings. If you’re going to ever want the levers, buy them up front. You will never get them at $14.67 each if installed after the fact.
There was a thread discussing Musikkon Harps, Ireland last fall. There may be further helpful information in that thread.
I remember that an Irish representative of the company corresponded during the thread and also left her contact email address.
It is important which country you are in. Ditto to most everything Biagio said. It is also important that you listen to as many harps as you can. Find a local harp group and go to several meetings. Or go to a harp camp. Even at our small camp recently, there were over a dozen different models represented.
“Warm” means different things to different people–and context of use is also important. I hear “warm” as pedal tension, with gut strings. Others describe that as woody, and hear the ideal harp sound as something like a Dusty Strings or Fisher, both of which can be wonderful instruments–but different from pedal.
I hear nylon as much brighter that gut, and with a longer sustain. Nylon also has a shorter life of sounding good, though that is more than offset by a much lower cost–if you’re replacing it yourself. I have nylon and fluorocarbon on my folk harp, but gut on my pedal.
I would quibble over the often repeated myth about gut’s sensitivity to moisture. Gut _will_ break more easily when exposed to high humidity. But nylon absorbs far more moisture (almost 10% by weight) and goes out of tune far more with a humidity change. Fluorocarbon absorbs almost no water, and is very stable. Gut is in between in water absorption. The mass change of the string from water absorption is what affects the tuning. I move both my pedal and my lever on a weekly basis into different locations. I don’t think I have repitched the middle octaves of my pedal in several weeks. I just move the upper end back to match the middle, and touch up a few bass wires. My lever requires a complete retuning (or two) with every single move. My bandmate’s carbon fiber with nylon also requires a lot of tuning when moved. A lot….more than my wooden lever. (Carbon fiber is _not_ more stable than wood over short term (a day or two) humidity changes. Wood takes days to weeks to absorb or lose any significant amount of moisture. Lumber has to be air dried for months to acclimate to building conditions, even when unfinished).
Dusty Strings FH-36S is a nice harp. Thormalens, like the Swan, sound rounder to me–the Dusty is more pointed and bell-like. Tripletts have always seemed overly bright. I also find the carbon-fiber harps to be thin, and a little on the weak side. (But their selling point is weight–and they are light). I’ve not been inspired by the Ogden, nor the Dusty Boulevard, which are both small harps at “pedal” tension. By far the best lever “pedal” tension I have ever heard were John Pratt’s harps. Extraordinary. The best light tension lever I have heard in person was a Fisher, but the waiting list is years right now. Rees also has an excellent reputation; I’ve not heard one in person. As you can guess, “good” sound is very much in the ear of the listener.
Some things to think about: Do you want to play for yourself only? Will you ever play in a large room or with other instruments? What kind of harp music do you aspire to play? Folk? traditional Celtic? Hymns? Healing? New Age? Jazz? Baroque? Romantic/Impressionist? Modern? What is your budget for ongoing instrument maintenance after initial purchase? How hard are you willing to work at basic technique to produce a great sound? (I find pedal harp to be less forgiving of sloppy technique than most lighter tension harps, for instance.)
You asked for opinions!
Charles Nix
An answer for whether it is “normal” depends tremendously on:
1) what kind of harp
2) what kind of strings
3) what kind of environment (temperature and humidity)
4) what pitch of string
5) age of strings
6) is it always the same string?For instance, if I had a different gut string in the first or second octave break on my pedal harp during rainy weather, it would be completely normal.
If I had a middle-octave flourocarbon on a light-tension lever harp break even once in ten years, I would be looking for a specific cause.
Can you give some more information?
Charles Nix
Many do play harp without reading music, especially in the Celtic and folk traditions. There is also a specifically Spanish tradition–at least there was a distinct tradition at one time, because the Latin American tradition is huge, and was established in colonial times.
I can’t speak to that model. Regardless, in any harp line, one might be good and the next one not so good.
I started with a 29-string, down to the same C as the bardic, which is an octave below middle-C. I still have that harp. It is still very portable. And I have it on a 40 cm stool to hit my shoulder high enough to feel right.
However, almost all arranged harp music assumes a full octave below that. You will be playing many things an octave higher than written, and rearranging to suit your instrument. If you are pursuing folk music, then you may be doing your own arranging, so you may be fine. If you intend to play from score, you will be constantly figuring out how to move up or down to make it fit.
Since you are coming from guitar, think of it this way. Play the guitar entirely without using the lower two strings. Your D string is only just above the lowest string on that harp. You will have quite a few more notes higher than you can reach on the guitar, though.
Used harps are a very good option, especially for a limited budget. In many ways, I prefer pre-owned. You can listen and hear what it will sound like when it breaks in, as all harps do.
It is important to have a used harp restrung and regulated unless it was properly done quite recently. Be sure to figure the expense of that into your budget. New strings will greatly change the sound of the harp, particularly with nylon and wires more than 5 years old.
Finding a teacher first can be invaluable in the harp purchase. 1) They may have students who are selling their lever harp, whether to move to more strings, or to move to pedal.
2) They might have fellow teachers with students as above.
3) They will know where the music conservatories are who might have advancing students.
Many people start on lever harps, then change larger or to pedal, and no longer needing the smaller harp, but having an emotional attachment, would love the opportunity to sell it on to someone who will appreciate and love it.
Just some thoughts.
Charles Nix
Also, if you want to mention your country, someone on here might be familiar with the harp market in that part of the world.
(And your English is excellent. I would have thought you a native writer.)
Not surprising for gut to break in high humidity. Perhaps your offering to pay for all the additional electricity would be less expensive than harp strings?
If you don’t have to play this month, do you have a friend with air conditioning? or a school or church where you could store the harp for a month? (Be sure you have all-risk insurance.)
You can reduce the tension, and it would certainly reduce breakage of strings–but don’t go very far, and certainly don’t remove all tension from the soundboard.
I’m not as worried about the temperature, as about how high the humidity is. Typically, it would be highest at night. Continuously over 70-80% relative will mean rusting parts. I am also assuming you’re opening windows at night. Are you subject to sea air? The salt with the humidity could also provoke rusting.
