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I enjoy playing a Stoney End Briar Rose enough to recommend the Marion if you need that large a harp. The Stones are easy to work with and their instruments produce a wonderful sound. Four octaves, and the shorter length, were deciding factors for me; otherwise, I would likely have chosen the Marion myself.
The link hasn’t worked for me either the past few days. It’s possible they’ve migrated to a new hosting service, and the new IPs haven’t fully propagated, so that some of us are able to connect and others aren’t. But, then again, I can’t discover any DNS entries for them at all. That’s very strange. The site does seem to have vanished entirely when browsing from Alabama.
As a newbie, I’ve only had opportunity to play one 36-string Blevins floor harp so used it as a beginning comparison. Cindy Blevins and Eve Stone have readily answered my questions via email and phone. Many of the vendor sites provide sound clips and pages, if not full blown brochures, that explain how various boxes, sound boards, string types, tensions, and woods affect playing style and ultimate results. Digging through the sites taught me what was important to consider in addition to providing general information. Here’s the link I used to find most of them:
http://www.harpmall.com/harps_for_sale.htm
There are also a few online communities of helpful people in addition to the crowd at Harpcolumn. Their experiences are broad and opinions are, well, opinions. But a few months, yes months, of reading historical posts, and asking for clarifications, have helped to gel what I want, what I need, and what I ordered. The only stupid questions are the ones I haven’t asked.
The Virtual Harp Circle: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualharpcircle/
You Gotta Have Harp: http://yougottahaveharp.ning.com/What I really had to dig dig dig for was pictures and videos of people playing specific models. If I have one suggestion for vendors, it’s to post some pictures and videos of people playing your various models so we can get a sensible idea of the harp’s sizing and how it falls on a person. “Fall” is probably not the best term to use. Youtube and some of the conference sites were the best sources I found to help me visualize. Sylvia Wood has a good running list of event sites:
http://www.harpcenter.com/category/harp-events
If you really just can’t get anywhere to play a collection of harps, the answer is just keep looking, digging, reading, listening, watching, and asking until you’re comfortable making a decision. That’s what I did. My harp bookmark folder has 36 (back where I started) links and some of those are pages of links. Hope this helps.
Do some or all of the students want to play for the event? Do they understand the logistics involved? Do they have a preference for consideration to be donated to a specific cause, used to secure equipment for the studio, or some other idea they have? It seems like a great teachable moment to guide them through the process of ironing out these details as a group.
