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I am nearly 4 inches taller than you and can play almost every pedal harp I have met without feeling too small. However, if you find you have trouble with many 47 strings Pilgrim do a couple of models, the Malvern and Aldeburgh, which I find have a particularly friendly balance for shorter players.
I live in hope that it should be less work to alter printed pedals to my preferences than to start from scratch. Sometimes it is!
While a different matter to printing them, I strongly encourage non-harpist composers to work out the pedals – and then count how many feet they think the poor harpist has!
I too use the Petite Pigs (bought from Salvi). Often I prefer the sound because as Kreig says you can cut through and be heard. While it is of course best to make the exact sound in rehearsal you will in concert I do sometimes use the picks in rehearsal even if I am going to use fingers in the concert if I feel my fingers will suffer to the extent I won’t play my best in concert if I don’t.
I assumed Carl was particularly querying the twitter messages that now appear on this site somewhere (is it the homepage?) rather than twitter generally.
I agree with Emma – is she large enough for the harps you are talking about? Does she play one in lessons? Do you also have a way to move such an instrument to rehearsals and performances? I suggest that you discuss smaller harps with the teacher, and even second hand ones. While second hand prices will vary between countries, I would expect you to be able to sell a third hand harp on for a similar price to what you paid when the time comes to upgrade it. If you could find, for instance, a second hand Clio by the time your daughter has outgrown that one she will be a better player and much more able to choose the harp which suits her as a player.
A couple more ideas, neither of which I have played.
http://www.selkiestrings.co.uk/travel.html
http://www.niebischandtree.co.uk/new-harps-troubador.htmlI have however seen people cycle with a harp about the size of a Pilgrim Clarsach 34 string on their back in a nice backpack case. I have also seen someone cycling with a double base on their back so guess it depends on your cycling, and where you would be doing this.
Another question touched on above is what musical background do you have and how confident are you about arranging your own music?
Why are you looking at those types of harps and not a single row one? Whose playing do you like to listen to and what are they playing on?
Have you consulted someone who specialises in musicians’ rehabilitation?
There is only a little left hand alone harp repertoire I know of – would that frustrate or help?
I have found it interesting to scrounge string ends and old strings from other players – harp and other instrumentalists.
You need to doo a bit of maths and add string lengths, but these may help work out if any instrument is particularly worth scrounging from.
http://daddario.com/upload/tension_chart_13934.pdf
http://www.orchestral.daddario.com/orchestralTensionCharts.pageSavarez do do wound nylons, but you have to look away from the harp pages. You might find it interesting to investigate tape wound guitar strings and see where that leads you.
I expect wound strings nowadays to come with ends, but have taken some old soft core ones off harps which had knots tied, which might help cut your cost.
My view is that more standardised harps aren’t needed – at least not until we have more standardised harpists! If most harpists could agree on a best spacing I doubt there would be so much variety.
For your spacing collection – Pilgrim design their harps to have the same spacing top to bottom.
That wasn’t the query I intended – my comparison was between a metal core with nylon wrap and a slightly thicker wire with no wrap as I know plain bronze works in similar circumstances and is much cheaper.
Phosphor bronze with a Nylon wrap around it? Having the wrap of a less dense material surprises me as it won’t give much of a flexibility benefit over a solid wire.
I haven’t come across Salopian doing windings in Nylon, but worth asking.
