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Hello! One of my students owns a very old L&H Troubadour. I called Chicago L&H and the person who answered took the serial # and model and had someone knowledgeable in that area call me back. It was the first model Troubadour built so he was able to get me the year built, which could have been late one year or very early the next. Very helpful!
Thank you again, Biagio, for your informative reply. I will check with the builder (Dale Wright) who recently bought the business from Dwight Blevins.
Thank you, Biagio! Do you know what tool to buy for the Truitt bridge pin? Allison mentioned the T6 star bit screwdriver for the screws on the lever. There are 3 socket sizes required for the Camac bridge pins. As you may have surmised, I will be getting this little harp (26 string Blevins Eden) April 3rd, so I don’t have anything to actually look at until then…Thank you in advance!
Thank you…sounds easy once you’ve done it. But without a visual I am at a disadvantage. With Camacs you start by turning bridge pin to the right if pitch is sharp, and to the left if flat. If you can’t get it to pitch before it buzzes, then you move the lever. So I don’t completely understand your instructions. Sounds like the 2 screws move the lever within “slots”, and then you tighten back down before you flip the lever again to listen to the pitch. Do you see my mental dilemma? 🙂
I am replying to an old post about tool(s) required to regulate Truitt levers. Hoping I will get a reply…I am getting a small harp with Truitt levers installed and want to be able to regulate them myself (as I do my Camac levered harps). But I can’t find a single link online, or a YouTube video (how to) on regulating Truitt levers. I am not within an easy driving distance to a professional, which is why I learned how to regulate my Camac levers (and bought the appropriate tools). Can anyone help me out? There was a link in this thread which no longer works. Thank you!
Good morning! Both Will and Biagio have covered all the bases! So good you will be visiting a harp store with a large selection. They should have someone available to play them for you as you listen from a distance away. And then you can narrow down your choices by sitting at them yourself, and see how the “fit” you! You will want to pluck away on them, just to feel the different tensions. Have a wonderful time!
Hello again! After reading the replies I started thinking about how I came upon buying my first harp. I live in Colorado and Dwight Blevins built harps in Grand Junction CO (he is now retired). I thought it would be wonderful (somehow appropriate) to have a harp from a builder in Colorado. Also, his harps were affordable (I only paid $1,700 for this harp new, fully levered, 36 strings, made of cherry). He was also considered one of the top builders of lever harps. I never actually heard this harp before purchasing it. I lived too far from anywhere to listen to a variety of harps. I tuned it up and every string was clear and resonate, top to bottom, without too many overtones that can create a muddy sound in the low end. It sounded beautiful. It held pitch perfectly, and rarely broke a string. So my first harp was a Blevins Espre 36. It was nylon strung. It was pretty and graceful as it sat in my livingroom. Though I have a classical music background, I knew that I wanted to play the harp for my own enjoyment, so wasn’t interested in the harp classical repertoire. I had a strict music education, so wanted to free myself from sheet music. When I discovered harp music notated for both hands AND chord names given, I was ecstatic! My theory background allowed me to play whatever worked within the chords indicated in the left hand, as I read the music and melody line for the right hand. Though I can read and play both hands from sheet music, chord names freed me up somehow! So there are as many reasons (if not a substantial number of more reasons) to buy a harp as there are harps available to buy! What a wonderful dilemma! I truly believe that there is something very precious in the process of buying your first harp…and yes, your second, third, fourth (and so on…) My suggestion: JUMP RIGHT IN!!! Oh! I should mention that I wish I had never sold my Blevins Espre. Because I am back to “square one” getting back into a folk harp that is nylon strung. I bought a Dusty Strings FH36S, and have now settled on a Triplett Eclipse. So go figure!!!!
Good morning! I enjoyed your post, as I have owned both the Ogden and the Prelude. So, I will keep this short. Lyon & Healy still offers the Bounty Program, where you can trade up your “new” Lyon & Healy lever harp or smaller pedal harp and put the cost of your trade up harp into a new Lyon and Healy or Salvi pedal harp. A wonderful program, which I took advantage of with my Prelude. They give you 5 years to do this. Which gives you time to save money toward your new pedal harp! Though this may seem limiting to others who have posted here, mentioning many harps to choose from, this is a very fine option for you. And the Ogden has beautiful sound. It may be limiting with regard to number of strings and optimal volume since it is a smaller harp, but it is lovely. It has what you are looking for: concert tension and spacing, and gut strings. Though finances may keep you from buying a more expensive harp in the beginning, you may be amazed what you will be able to do in this regard as time passes. Once you start playing, and hearing many harps, you will want to buy them all!!! So having a grasp of what you are looking for AND aiming for in the very beginning is wonderful! Good luck to you, and always enjoy the process 🙂
Hey! Merry Christmas everyone! Well, this is an update to my post here in Sept. My entire set of Premiere pedal gut on my Pratt Chamber harp are fabulous! Not a single broken string! They are amazing! And the sound is wonderful! So, AAtlanta had a 20%off Black Friday sale and Premier gut was included. So I treated myself to a set and just restrung my L&H Style 100 Concert Grand with them, and WWOW!!! They sound and feel wonderful! No breakage. No ccrackling when tying the kknots…I am sold on them…
Hi, Jennifer! I use a Swiffer! I buy the ones called “heavy duty” because they fluff out to a 360 degree fluffy head, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally rubbing the plastic parts against your harp that you slip the Swiffer over (and yes, I have the small rod that allows you to tip the end where the duster part goes, so you get a nice angle all the way around the harp and soundboard, etc. Also, I buy the “unscented” ones because I’m not sure if the scent might transfer to the harp surface in some chemical form, and besides, I don’t like how they smell…I also have a VERY nice makeup soft bristle brush which pulls back into it’s own case and a cap goes on, keeping it clean, and the bristles nice and straight. I use it to brush the discs and other small parts on my pedal harp, as well as all those hard to get to places, and all the small lever parts on my lever harps. That way the Swiffer doesn’t catch on the clipped ends of the strings at the top. Lots of dust here in Colorado!!! And I enjoy looking at my harps like you do 🙂
I purchased a new Triplett Eclipse (fully levered with Camac levers, 38 strings, and gorgeous figured Walnut), which was on order for nearly 10 months, and just recently arrived. I special ordered the wood and trim wood, as well as getting the built-in amplification system. I have been playing this harp for only a short time, but the sound is exceptional. I played a gig for 150+ people last night, in a huge wonderfully acoustically friendly open building, and did NOT need to amplify the harp. Yes, it cost more than $3,000. But I did get special wood and the built-in amplification system. If you can hold out and rent, and possibly try a few other larger lever harps, it is well worth the wait (and expense), if you choose the one you love. I also own a Pratt Chamber harp, 36 strings, fully levered with Camac levers, complete with an extended soundboard and strung high tension as a pedal harp with pedal gut from A-5 thru E-3. The sound is TOTALLY different from the Triplett. And I am not letting it go for that reason. I get a wonderful “pedal harp sound” with a smaller lever harp. I wish you all the very best in your next purchase of a larger lever harp. It is a joyful thing!!!
Good coffee morning!
I started playing the clarinet in elementary school (most likely because both of my older sisters played the clarinet, and so we all got “hand-me-downs”, as money was short. I pursued it all the way through college getting a Bachelor of Music degree. Then I worked, and music went by the wayside. I had an opportunity in college to take a quarter year of private lessons with the harp professor (she took on 3 of us who didn’t play a stringed instrument: me, a mezzo soprano, and one other individual). I fell in love with it, but didn’t buy my first harp until 30 years later (yikes!) That was in 2003. I took private lessons to get wrapped around it. Then pursued playing it on my own. As the past 15 years have so quickly passed, I’d say I am probably an intermediate player still. I play for my own enjoyment, often adding accompaniment without the sheet music, relying on my music theory background…much easier for me 🙂 A few years ago I just wanted to branch out on an instrument that I could produce rhythms and patterns on…so rented a 16/15 hammered dulcimer. I found someone who played very well, so we got together from time to time, and he would show me various patterns I could apply. I bought my own HD and really started having fun just hammering away! So diverse from the harp. Just what I needed. I wander away from it, then every now and then I pull it out and find such joy! I’m not really very good. I really would need to practice much more often to really learn my way around it, as it’s tuned in 5th’s, not chromatically, so that’s yet another learning curve. A friend visited and brought his Oud…Had never heard of it…We tried to “jam” together (Oud and harp), but it just didn’t mesh. So, out came my hammered dulcimer. The perfect combination! He was quite good on the Oud, so gave me simple patterns to play along with him that I could tackle, and we had an absolute BLAST! I highly recommend trying ANY instrument if you are focusing on only the harp. Especially if you are very proficient at the harp (perhaps pedal harp, orchestra performance, etc.) and read only off sheet music. Put the music away for awhile, and strike a balance without it!! I even joined a monthly acoustic instrument jam session with my harp once…No music, just listening and joining in. Lots of fun! There were 3 Ukulele players that came to it as well…And every month was a different combination of musicians and instruments. So never the same!YES, CHARLES! You got the “squeek” description exactly right! I will have to pick up some Johnson’s, as I don’t have any on hand, and will try it. Thank you for your quick reply!
Thank you, Gretchen! As I read your post it sounds like you keep an extra set of strings (which would include the extra lengths of left-overs after any restringing), bringing down the cost to purchase 4th and 5th octaves only, since there are no extra lengths of those?? — so the total cost to keep backups would be in the 4th and 5th octaves initially…However, you mentioned they break so rarely that it wouldn’t be necessary. But if they do, then a person needs to wait anywhere from 3-5 days to receive the replacement…I have read so much about when to restring a harp: after “X” # of years (or 1 year?) if you play your harp “X” # of hours per day…you know what I’m getting at here…But then there is the factor of restringing to keep strings at a more “fresh” tension so that a broken string at an inopportune moment during a performance or gig would be unlikely. So, even though my L&H pedal harp needs restringing because they just don’t sound good anymore (I haven’t been playing it for some time…just keep it tuned and played from time to time to keep it “in shape”, so-to-speak), I wonder about restringing at some regular interval (once a year, once every 2 years, etc.) to keep them from breaking simply because of them stretching after so long and reaching that “break point”, even if they sound good. Forgive me if I am wordy here, just wanting to hear what you think in this regard…Thank you so much!
