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Recently noticed two used Pilgrim Progress pedal harps at their website going for GBP 4,700 and GBP 5,000. That’s a kid-sized double-action harp (40 or 41 strings, 5’0″ tall, 50 lbs) for not that much more than a really good lever harp with plenty of levers and strings–though if you’re in the U.S., the cost of having it sent from England would add up. Sounds pretty good, too (not just my opinion). They refer you to a YouTube video of Deborah Henson-Conant playing one (Samba d’Orfeu). You refer to yourself as young–do you mean really young, as in teenage or younger? If so, this harp might be ideal.
She’s playing an Erard ram’s-head. I think there’s a reproduction of this painting in one of Roslyn Rensch’s books.
You mean I’m not the only one who has trouble tying harp strings? Whoever said it’s just as easy as changing a guitar string is wrong.
If this is the Handel Concerto for Lute and Harp with the missing lute part (which was reconstructed for a recording once), then maybe some of the difficulties come from the harp’s having to carry some of the work it should have been sharing with the lute? With or without lute, I like it a lot.
I sorta doubt it. Reason: judging from the website, he’s calculated things pretty exactly, what with three different kinds of strings and an odd-looking harmonic curve. Some while back I asked Pam Bruner about the Vesta, no longer made, a 32-string instrument, whether the lowest string (E) couldn’t be lowered to C. She said no, that someone had insisted on lowering it to D, but that the C would mess with the tension too much. I imagine some harps are more forgiving than others on this score.
But look, why don’t you ask the maker himself? And while you’re at it, find out why he chose such an odd range (with B instead of C as the lowest string). I wouldn’t be inclined to tinker with a harp that sounds as good as that one does (I was just floored by the middle and the bass), and at least you DO have the C two octaves below middle C.
Well, I’m ancient, but…let’s see, started guitar in the early ’60s, harp in the late ’70s, and banjo in the mid-’90s. Long hiatuses on all three instruments, which certainly keeps you from making a lot of progress, but I always get back to them. The three instruments interfere with one another to some extent, but only as much as, say, one Romance language with another. On the whole I think they help more than they hinder.
I noticed exactly the same thing while trying out a Dusty 36 in maple and walnut. The maple harp, besides being brighter, is also 2 lbs heavier.
FWIW I remember reading that the founder of Camac was inspired by the old Erards. That might account for the angle you speak of.
A lyre-back chair I bought for $5 when the old San Juan Hotel was closing its doors. Have to use a large pillow with it to play a 5′ 3″ 33-string Troubadour. (I’m just under 5′ 0″).
I live in steamy Florida and have been considering Aquila Nygut for a classical guitar, a nylon-strung minstrel banjo (fretless and tuned a fourth lower than the modern banjo) and–maybe!–a harp.
What I hear from banjo-playing friends: the Nylguts take their own sweet time about stretching out, but once they have done so, the majority like them very much. (A few prefer nylon classical guitar strings.)
I am a little reluctant to invest in a whole set of Nylguts for a 33-string harp, but if they really resist humidity and have a better tone than nylon–!
