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Ann Hobson-Pilot, to begin with. I heard her play Debussy’s “Dances Sacred and Profane”, and IIRC, that harp part was originally written for a Pleyel. That’s a lot of accidentals in not a lot of time!
A folk harp seems to be what you seek. As was observed by others, darkness is relative. Darker sound comes from a big deep soundbox.
Audrey, I know of a local woman who does assemble Music Makers kits, and adds some features of her own to make them stay together better. (She also rebuilds pianos.) This does give me the idea for a value-added niche market: reselling selected Paki harps after restringing and regulating. Maybe she will help me.
Song Sparrow, this thread will never fade away, because even a peaceful instrument like the harp is fraught with strong opinions. All tools of the performing arts are ego-charged. There is always that vision of the master luthier smashing his apprentice’s work to bits on the table, saying, “It will never bear my name — save your anger for your work, boy!”
The topic would lose interest if Mid-East did not improve their product. I think Mid-East Quality Control has improved, for some sort of market pressure. They replaced a cracking up Caitlin with not simply an equally flimsy Caitlin but a more durable one, that even supports real strings. They replaced a Hailey with a misplaced fret pin with one having all levers in reasonably good tune. If Mid-East keeps improving their quality, then this will be a News thread.
One argument about the Mid-East quality out of the packing box is the fiddling required. People with kit-built harps will be more willing to do the work they did not pay for in the harp’s up-front cost.
The Markwood strings for the Caitlin cost me about $103 IIRC. Laurie (Hill?) at Markwood Heavenly Strings seems to have experience with scaling strings for PHSOs because PakistanMeghan and PakistanHeather are listed on the website as standard string sets. Now she can offer PakistanCaitlin.
A little reaming was required to fit the wound tenor strings. If structural failure needs a couple of years, then I must admit the longevity experiment is incomplete. The Caitlin is the one I set down gently, on carpet, knowing how overstressed it is with all those strings. The Hailey OTOH feels like I could throw it against the wall (which is one way to get some sound out of it) without any harm done.
I think the Caitlin has a solid market niche because if it stays together a couple of years it will be a common gateway to the X-realm.
Mid-East will replace an obviously defective harp, even one purchased for below list from a discounter. Being a PHSO is not something they would accept as a defect.
The Mid-East Caitlin, when restrung, can be an adequate harp. Its deep soundbox gives it a deep resonance, and its Pleyel-type 7/5 courses mean no lever troubles.
The EMS Hailey has levers that seem to work. After restringing the tone
improved, but I still find it thin and nasal, and would expect no
better of the other EMS Roundbacks. I’m thinking of selling it locally and getting the Blevens Melody I really wanted.I’ve seen her there. She was playing Christmas music, it being that time. She might have had a small amplifier, to help it carry over background noise.
If you are an absolute beginner, one of those nine teachers should still be able to help you learn the basics on your natural strings. Every C tune I know, I could carry onto my Caitlin. Restringing with the Markwood set helps because all the sharp strings are black.
If you are an absolute beginner, one of those nine teachers should still be able to help you learn the basics on your natural strings. Every C tune I know, I could carry onto my Caitlin. Restringing with the Markwood set helps because all the sharp strings are black.
Sidney, I find it strange that you conflate the two names Salvi and Lyon&Healy around a virgule, as if they were secret twins or something. Salvi is the choice of Orla Fallon, Cormac Debarra, and Moya Brennan, all of them well-known Celtic harp players.
Mid-East was good about my complaint of a break in the soundboard: they replaced the instrument promptly, allowing me to keep the string set and tuning key from the old one. The replacement has endured two or three times as long, though I’m being very careful with it. The dull sound, I discovered, could be cured by putting on those replacement strings, which are glassy-smooth compared with the bumpy original ones. String tone and tunability improved beyond comparison.
Markwood Heavenly Strings have already packaged string sets called “PakistanHeather” and “PakistanMeghan”. Now that I made Markwood a string table of my Mid-East x-strung, maybe they will list a “PakistanCaitlin”.
Pakistan harps? Not for the beginner, who has more important concerns. Got a dull plunky one? Put on some real strings and try it again.
A concert grand harp goes down to C7? Using the string convention Blevins Harps does, where C5 is one octave below Middle C, this places C7 as the lowest C on the piano. Does a concert grand harp really go this low?
The builders’ lack of harp acoustics knowledge is becoming evident. My lowest strings pass through the soundboard so close to the column joint there is no way that much sound is conducted from those strings to the soundboard. Still, the strings are spaced properly enough (haven’t used Blevens’s measurement on it yet) that I think I can get the hang of cross-strung playing, with the help of Harper Tasche’s book. Then I can graduate from this rosewood sculpture of a harp.
With most lap harps it should be fine. Under the crushing weight of a harp-shaped chunk of rosewood, however, you might get tired.
