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Call the Haddonfield NJ office of Va Harp Center. or Lindeblad piano in NJ. or there is surely a top end piano shop in Philadelphia or Baltimore. You’re in musical instrument central…
Pre-cat will touch up basically like older nitrocellulose. It has a slow-acting catalyst added to help with cross-linking the polymer. Mostly the catalyst starts to work after the solvent starts evaporating. The older nitrocellulose just evaporated and left finish film on the surface without cross-linking. It gives extra strength and some water resistance.
I had also forgotton about modern water-based finishes. At 14 years ago, and made in Chicago, I doubt that would be it. They have a specific “look” of very slightly milky whiteness which is easy to spot. nitrocellulose and pre-cat look slightly amber. And the surface hardness is also different.
Where are you located?
Not to be too snarky — but if the repair person can’t tell virtually just from looking, or maybe a test in an inconspicuous place, you’ve got the wrong repair person.
How old is the harp?
There are only about 6 total finish possibilities. Polyester and Polyurethane are used for thick coatings on pianos. I can’t imagine that on a harp.
Older instruments would be nitrocellulose lacquer. Newer (maybe past 30? years) would be Pre-cat lacquer. Either touches up the same way. But again, he should be able to tell that just from looking. The poly-xxx finishes look very different from lacquers. (The other possible finishes either aren’t used in production factories, or not in the past 100 years)
I’d find a good piano shop in your area that does restoration work. They have hit every possible finish, and will know how to work with a musical instrument.
Typical lacquer refinish and topcoat would be fill the dent, then mask and spray over. Then buff with compound. If he buffs and gets that compound dust in your action, I would be seriously worried about wear in the rivets and bearings afterward.
All, I feel the need to circle back to a point that may be overlooked in all the wonderful suggestions about harps, all of which can be very nice instruments.
I read into @dylanhicks original post, perhaps very incorrectly, that Dylan is 1) entirely new to the harp (3 years), and mostly or entirely self-taught. There seems to be no mention of a teacher guiding the process.
Nearly every self-taught harpist I have ever seen, _myself included at first_ (until I stopped and relearned finger motion and placement), did not have proper technique to produce a good sound from a concert tension harp. You can get away with a LOT more on a lower-tension folk harp. I found this as true on a Troubadour as on a pedal harp — you better place and use full finger action from the knuckle, or you will have either a thin sound or a wooden sound.
On Dustys, Heartlands, Tripletts, Fishers, Thormahlens that I see, this may be better and more controllable, but nearly anything gets an ear-pleasing sound.
I would hate to have Dylan go through the frustration and expense of multiple instruments, especially when few of the easier-to-play medium tension instruments will meet his string spacing requests. And then find at the end that the Troubadour did exactly what was wanted — when a trained harpist played it.
I could easily be all wrong — but that is what jumped out at me.
So, the photo isn’t showing in your post — but — I thought Roosbeck _was_ also Pakistani?
For NN strings, Northshore Strings or Markwood Heavenly Strings. Dusty would only have strings specific to their own harps. For a wound string, especially on a zither tuning pin instrument (if that one is such) the winding has to be exactly the right length to come over the bridge pin when at pitch, but not interfere with the tuning pin because the windings usually won’t go through those holes.
You should also be considering _why_ that string broke. It is not normal for NNs to frequently break unless: 1) there is a flaw in the string, 2) there is a rough spot or sharp edge where it passes over, 3) the scaling for the instrument is too long, or 4) the wrong string was installed at some point. I would surely be looking for the cause before just replacing a string.
Also, these strings will be custom made. Getting a set of them is more usual and cost-effecting.
I can’t speak to the sound of your Troubadour, though I have seen several from the last 10-15 years. They are concert tension and concert spacing. You will not find many possibilities in the lever/folk harp world like that, except from regular pedal harp makers, who build various lever harps mostly as “starter” instruments.
A birch-ply soundboard is not synthetic, and is predominantly used on the vast majority of lever harps produced. While certainly not as good as a _good_ spruce or cedar board, they are certainly far more consistent, and you have to have a rather good instrument otherwise for it to make much difference.
In general, when I (as a harp repair person) hear of a new harpist “not liking the sound” I go to a couple of possibilities. 1) You don’t like the “concert gut / high tension” sound. Try a good pedal harp from a local symphony player (Schedule a lesson and try their harp out). Does that make the sound you want?
2) Examine your technique. If you are not “placing” and using correct finger motion from the correct portion of the finger you will never get a great sound out of a concert tension gut strung harp. Lower tension “folk” lever harps can be much more forgiving of technique, and will (in gross generalities) have a brighter, more ringing sound, rather than the warm, rich plunk of a concert gut harp.
3) List some harps you have played that you like. What is in common? You can list them here if you want; many people here have a lot of experience with different harps.
4) Maybe this is the most important question: What kind of music are you trying to play? What genre draws you to the harp. You need a harp suited to that music. Harps are not designed for the same purpose.The Pratt Chamber harps (full-size) I have heard were most excellent, with a big, warm round sound. I don’t know the current status of the company, but would suggest contacting Summerhays Music Center. I’m sure they will know.
Lastly, absolutely consider a pre-owned instrument. Have it checked by a knowledgeable technician if buying from an individual especially.
@colincarter, Carl is absolutely correct. Harp is generally not possible to learn correctly without a teacher. You are asking a forum to give you remotely the cumulative knowledge about a physical skill from 200+ years of expert harpists. You can’t learn it that way.
And I’m not sure what you mean by easiest. It is probably the easiest to understand the concept of which note is which. It is probably the easiest to make a reasonably satisfactory sound upon from the beginning.
But without a proper teacher, teaching proper technique, you will never progress beyond picking out a melody. Scales are impossible without learned technique. Playing without extraneous buzzing is also impossible.
If you want to play harp, get a teacher. If you want to pluck a few notes, get one of several books, and have fun. But if you go that route to actually play harp fluently, many of us can guarantee that you will be starting over with technique at some point. Unlearning and relearning is far more difficult than learning correctly the first time.
To me, number one is be a professional: arrive early, have everything you need, be ready to tune with fifteen things going on around while people ask questions, and be friendly. Dress appropriately for _their_ expectations and type of event.
Number two is play beautifully. Don’t play things you are not ready to play, or simplify them. And if there is a mistake, just keep going.
For me, the break between pieces should only be short enough to turn pages. If you can arrange so that keys and mood of pieces flow smoothly from one to another, just play then in that order.
To take a longer break seem to me like you’re looking for applause. I would never expect applause on a background music event. You may have some, but a small head nod and smile to acknowledge is sufficient.
For a 45 minute set, many would play straight through, or halfway through with a 2 minute break.
Did I say arrive early and tune?
Gregg, with the stringing on the Boulevard, you would not hear any scraping sound, except in the bass, as you noted.
The Lovelands do have a pitch slide up if engaged while the string is vibrating, OR if they are not fitted and aligned correctly, and part of the nose of the lever bumps the string before the groove engages. The solution is drop a finger and damp the string on the way to the lever.
They will also scrape on wound strings. In the case of the Boulevard, only the low 8 are wound. Your large guts (instead of the more common Nylon/nylon on most folk harps) won’t scrape. And if the groove sizes are chosen correctly, there is only a slight scrape sound. But it can be a lot worse if misaligned or mis-sized.
Rees are very similar to Truitt. In practicality, you must have threaded bridge pins, not plain sliding ones. So be sure of that. Both Rees and Truitt will be quiet in action, but likely have much more throw than the Universals.
Are you aware of how much hole-filling and finish touch-up will be needed to make a nice looking job of a lever change? Do you have the woodworking skills to accurately layout and drill new screw holes, even if they overlap into the side of the previous hole? Just want you to be aware that changing levers is much harder even than installing new ones. It is not a project for a hand drill, but for completely unstringing the harp, disassembling the neck, laying out with a scribe, and having a proper drill press. Or you will have a job that will be less than satisfactory.
My first thought is that the Universals are clicking as the metal hits metal as they fully open. Could you glue a dot of very thin felt (like billiard cloth) or blotter paper at the spot where the metal hits to cushion the lever motion. I don’t have a Universal here to look at, and there may not be string clearance available, but it is a LOT less work than changing levers, and is totally reversible if it doesn’t help.
Charles Nix
Balfour, that scraping sound on wound strings _is_ annoying. It doesn’t help that the factory sizing chart from Loveland doesn’t always produce the best string fit. You may know that Loveland levers have three different brackets: fretted angled down, fretted angled up, and unfretted. And there are around 16 different sized handles, each number for a different diameter string. A little larger number sometimes works more smoothly on wound strings. I have had success with smoothing and enlarging the groove sometimes also.
Another cause of the scraping is if the lever is slightly mis-mounted, or rotated, or pulls the string even a little to one side as it engages. So, one noisy string usually has a definite cause, but there is always some noise on wound strings.
I’ve been wanting to see the Delacour and Teifi levers in person, but haven’t yet. Teifi, after an initial public selling, now seems to be producing only for their own instruments. Both are expensive.
Basically that is totally normal. The strings are not supposed to be vibrating when moving a lever, and you move the lever quickly. Every brand I can think of will have some pitch movement as the lever moves over the string, or tightens against the string. Truitts will start sharp of the pitch then slide down–the opposite of Lovelands, but they move faster. Camacs and L&H Performance engage, then slightly sharpen as they tighten. Even pedal harp discs move pitch slightly as the disc engages and tensions the string, but: 1) they are moving very fast because of the pedal action, and 2) it is a lot less than the sharpening/decay of normal plucking.
So, other levers can be better, and will also deaden the strings less. If you’re upgrading to a more modern harp, it probably won’t have Lovelands anyway. They were revolutionary when they came out, and are still the most excellent economy choice, but other all-metal designs damp the sound less and engage more definitively.
There was a discussion of that here a few years back.
Maybe that is a starting point for you.
