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Pilgrim call them bushes (and my Concise Oxford Dictionary agrees) – might be different in American!
Pilgrim’s bushes are fitted by a means I would almost call riveting – at least the one I had to change on a Pilgrim Carsach was. I drilled it out from the inside until the inner lip came off, then it pushed out easily from the inside. I cut the new one to length and slid it in.
If the bolt is not pulling out, nor the nut unscrewing (mark its position with pen so you can see) then the metal bracket could be bending.
The legs look removable – if you are sure you will never want this you could glue them in place.
I just had a quick play with typical bad habits and think your elbow may be too low and getting in your way too.
I should add that that is only the fastest way I could think of describing a rough approximation to a hand position that might work – it will need tweaking!
What does your teacher say?
Place the 3rd lower on the strings so you have vertical distance to play with. Place your thumb on C and 3rd on E and freeze your hand – keeping it the exact position rotate around the thumb tip to place the 3rd on the E above. You should have just as much room to play the thumb as you did when the 3rd was below. If this doesn’t work I would want to change your basic hand position.
Another option is always to measure the original strings and see how they compare with BB thicknesses.
Elbows shouldn’t droop. Don’t always play quietly – if your technique works loud it is likely to work quiet, but the otherway round is less certain.
I believe the book is only available in Italian, but there is an English translation of the text. I think I saw a copy of it i the files of the yahoogroups harplist.
Does anyone else have the book Affairs of the Harp with the harpoon captioned ‘restringing may be easily accomplished at home’ or something like that?
If the strings are ancient changing them all, especially the bass wires, will significantly improve the tone of the harp. You can keep the old ones for emergency use instead of having fresh expensive ones sitting around getting old.
I would expect a mixed bag of levers to be at least as irritating as the old ones. I suggest you look at costs for replacing all of them, but there is no hurry to decide. You will manage fine for some months of beginning harp music.
With your piano background you will be able to progress rapidly on the harp and I very strongly advise you to have at least an initial few lessons with a teacher who is good on technique. As you know, playing an instrument is so much more than the right notes in the right order, and the nuances of how to play is hard to get across even in the best book. I advise you commit to six weekly lessons at the start, and after that you will have a much better idea of what you can accomplish by yourself and when you need a teacher’s eye and ear. So much easier than pracitising in bad habits for a year and then hitting a roadblock.
Firstly if whoever is 600 miles away really knows old harps it is quite probably worth the trip!
Secondly, as an historical aside the standard strings of the era of your Clark harp are an excellent match for modern lever harp strings (in gut that is) so by putting lever harp strings on tuned to pitch you would not be reducing tension. Just so you know the starting point.
Without, in anyway assessing the harp for what it can take, your colour choices include:
Moving the lever harp strings down the harp – moving them down an octave and then tuning to pitch would be in the same tension ball park as keeping them where they are and tuning a 4th low and would probably sound better. If you still don’t like the sound of the thickest nylons try gut. If you don’t have perfect pitch and won’t be playing with others I would suggest move the strings down an octave, tune as high as you feel comfortable and have a transposing instrument.Pedal harp strings moved an octave down from their pedal harp position (I have a 1930s blade harp strung like this) – this works out similar to moving the lever strings down about a 4th. Howard Bryan has kindly put string charts on his website so you can see what one maker’s thicknesses are. http://hbryan.com/strings-and-string-tension/
Dye or pens -if it comes off on your fingers you can still navigate by the colour at the ends of the strings.
What sort of wires do you have? I hope they are ‘soft core’ without a central steel wire. I don’t know which Bow Brand make.
