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Yes, that chart means you can order strings in any of three diameters.
As to charts for other brands:
Here’s the Bow Brand nylon scale: https://www.morleyharps.co.uk/Files/116004/BowBrand_Nylon_Scale.pdfHi Saul, I think you may mean Savarez nylon strings. (Alliance is used for their carbon strings).
You will find more information on all their harp strings (gut, nylon, carbon, and wire) from Saverez at: https://www.savarez.com/harpeharpe
There you will also find e.g. a link to a sheet with the diameters of their nylon harp strings (and sheets with information on their other string materials for the harp).
If you want a harp with cracks in the wood and lots of broken strings, have the harp stand before a window where the sun can shine directly on the harp. It even gets worse when there are quick and large differences in the temperature of day and night. I don’t know whether the air humidity can be very low in the proximity of the ocean, but an air humidity lower than 40% could cause cracks in the wood and the gut strings would be very much dried out and brittle if they’re not broken.
In addition: I guess that, if the turning of the soundbox happened by the rough handling of the harp in transport, one would have seen traces of friction. It all looks very smoothly, so I think this harp must have escaped quality control, both at the manufacturer’s as well at the shop’s.
Hi Greg,
Sorry, I misunderstood. I saw the asymmetric opening between the column and what’s under it and looked no further.I just had another look at the pictures and you are right: it looks like the whole body has turned and stands now significantly asymmetrical to the front side of the base.
I had a look at my own Prelude, and the body is perfectly symmetrical to the front side of the base.I don’t know whether this shift could have been the result of the rough transport it has suffered. I do hope some of the harp technicians and other technically knowledgeable people at this forum, will shine their light on this case.
Hi Gregg, I understand you must be shocked by the damage of the box, but the harp itself looks fine at first glance. I guess you fear that the harp has suffered some invisible damage, similarly to a harp that has fallen from the stairs and which looked fine at first, but after some time developed more visible damage. We don’t know how roughly the harp was treated while in transport, but the fact that it ended up with the wrong side up, would give me a bad feeling too (at the box of my Prelude it said very clearly which way would need to be up).
As to the misalignment at the base of the pillar. The picture isn’t very clear, but it’s obvious, it should not be like that. However, I lack the technical knowledge to say whether this is only cosmetic or not.
I looked especially at the distance between the strings, as an uneven distance would be a serious flaw. However, I couldn’t discover something like that at the angle you made the pictures. Perhaps it would show better if you made a photo with your camera perpendicular to the strings, so not in an rather narrow angle. But as far as I can see now, the string distance just looks fine. And yes, a black string between white strings may cause some misleading effect in the real distance between them.
Therefore, it would be necessary to measure the distance in mm from the core of the concerned strings to the core of their neighboring strings (in Dutch we would call this, literally translated, ‘heart to heart distance’ no idea about the English).I agree with what Tacye says above about the symmetry at the top of the column.
Now, at this forum there are some people with way more technical insights than I have, so I do hope for you that they will shine their lights on these issues in the coming few days and perhaps, they can take away some of your fears.
At first glance your harp looks just fine. Only the base connection is not what it should be (mine doesn’t have any opening there and yours does have a kind of asymmetrical opening), but, as I said above, I don’t know whether this has functional consequences or is only aesthetic. And, if it’s only aesthetic and the harp is functionally fine, you could ask the shop for a reduction of the price.
Anyway, if the harp gives you bad vibes, just return it to the shop. If you can’t be happy with it now, chances are you won’t ever be happy with it.
Yes, the string spacing is increasing from the highest strings to the lowest, but this goes gradually, not suddenly.
Anyway, please, do try to post the photos as there are several people on this forum who have far more knowledge than I on several technical aspects.
And yes, it’s not safe to post email addresses on public forums if you want to avoid spam avalanches.
By the way, I’ve got a Prelude myself and love it.
Just curious, does it the metal plate on the harp state the factory and the number? Or does the text on the metal plate start with something like: “Designed by” [etc.]?
Apart from the visual issues, there are also the functional issues. These are not minor flaws!
The worst thing for me would be that the string spacing is uneven. This makes accurately gripping the strings unnecessarily more difficult. You wrote: “in particular, the 4F string and eyelet are noticeably closer to the neighboring G than to the E.” This will make playing ‘près de la table’ awkward and I suspect that the levers at best will be noisy and perhaps be out of tune. I even wonder whether they could be adjusted in a way that would make them function as they may be mounted too much to the left or the right of the string.
Apart from all this, you won’t be able [Edit: you will be having a hard time] to resell the harp later on [Edit: for a reasonable price]. At the moment, you probably think this is a harp for the rest of your playing life, but as many people here can tell you: a lot of us develop their taste in harps while playing and will own several harps in due time
You can easily compress the photos with the completely free (no ads!) program paint.net You can choose to compress them to perhaps a 90% quality. You will see that this makes the amount of MB’s of the picture a lot smaller. Of course, you could also make the photo’s themselves smaller, perhaps by cutting some of the margins or by making the whole photo smaller.
Greg, I read the post with the issues of your new Prelude in my mail. You may have tried to add something to that post, but the software of this forum has some annoying bugs, one of them being that the whole message dissappears when you add or change something in your message.
Anyway, it’s obvious that you got a harp that somehow managed to escape the quality control you may expect from the factory and the shop where you bought the harp.
Frankly, if I were in your shoes, I would demand the shop to take it back and pay you all your money back, including all the transport costs you made.Congratulations in advance with your Ogden.
Both the Camac Isolde Classic and the L&H Ogden have pedal gut tension.
The main difference is that the Isolde is strung with fluorocarbon strings and lever tension wire strings and the Ogden is strung with pedal gut strings en pedal wire strings.
The Ogden will sound warmer and mellower and have thicker strings.
The levers of the Camac can be flipped more easily and smoothly, but the levers of the Ogden are nice enough too.
The technique of playing those harps is exactly the same. You will even need the same force to squeeze the strings.
The fact that the upper strings of the Prelude sounded plinky to you, may have to do with the fact that you then were a beginner on the harp and were still developing your skills to produce a full and warm tone.
I find the tone of the upper strings of the Dusty a tiny bit plinky.In this clip you hear 3 harps played in the same room. One of them being a L&H Ogden (34 strings, with pedal tension gut) and one a Dusty Allegro Nylon strung harp (I’m not sure whether this is a 34 string harp). The third harp is a Salvi Gaia (38 strings, strung with pedal tension gut). https://youtu.be/6iPLzipq4kQ
By the way, I’ve got a L&H Prelude. It’s 4.5 years old and its levers function just fine (though not as sophisticated as the levers on my Camac harp).
As for easy transport, a L&H Ogden may be better suited than a Prelude, but frankly, for taking a harp into a park, I would think of a Dusty Ravenna 26 or, if you live in Europe, a Camac Odyssey (27 nylon strings).
I’m a great fan of the books of Suzanne Guldimann ‘for lap harp’, by which she means harps with a full octave below middle C. On even smaller harps one can usually play the music an octave higher.
I’ve got several of her books and love to play from them. My favorite is Pastime with Good Company: Elizabethan Songs and Dances.
I’ve got a rather compact Salvi Heather 34 strings meant for travel. This model has since long be discontinued. It’s legs can be easily removed and screwed on back again. I love it’s full sound.
Yet, I’m sometimes dreaming of a small double harp, with all its exciting possibilities. Anyway, I might still miss the bass strings.
Artist Nylon is made by Bow Brand. Camac Nylgut is made by Aquila.
Artist Nylon has been much longer on the market than Nylgut for pedal harps.
That’s all I know about it. I once used Artist Nylon for the upper register of a harp I don’t longer own. I was not very impressed by its sound, but I don’t know whether nylgut at that place would have sounded better.
