Does a Harp Regulation Include all new Strings?

People often ask me if I’ll replace all the strings when they bring their harp in for a regulation. A smaller number of people assume that a regulation includes all new strings and are surprised (and disappointed) to find out that this isn’t the case. While I may replace a string or two at a regulation appointment, and I’ll often replace the bass wires, complete restringing requires a significant additional investment of time, and thus carries an extra labor charge. Then there’s the strings, which on a full sized pedal harp can cost close to $500 for a full set.

I am always glad when my customers are willing to invest in new strings. A lot of harpists tend to leave strings on their harps longer than they should. I often work on harps whose strings have lost much of their tonal quality and sustain. I am happy to schedule the additional time to restring a harp before regulating it. However, I can’t offer the same-day service I can offer for a standard regulation. In order to completely restring and regulate a harp, I generally request that the customer leave it with me for three days.

The reason for this time lag is that brand new harp strings don’t hold their tuning well enough for me to accurately regulate the harp’s intonation. Ideally, there should be a two-week lag  between the day a harp is restrung and the day it is regulated, and someone should tune the new strings at least once a day.

Since my road service regulation stops rarely last two weeks, I have to compress this “string settling and stretching” period down to a couple of days. I do this by tuning the harp over and over, accelerating the settling process. After two days of intensive tuning, while the strings will still stretch to some degree, they will hold their tuning well enough to complete the pitch regulation process.

If you are interested in having your harp both restrung and regulated, please contact me in advance. We’ll need to work out a time for you to leave the harp with me, and there are decisions to make about which strings to order. You can use strings you already have on hand, but I caution you not to bother with them if they are more than five years old. Strings age even sealed in a package, so if your spare set goes back more than that, it’s better to throw them out and start fresh.

Moss Harp Service to Visit Las Vegas, February, 2010

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

I’ll be setting up shop somewhere in Las Vegas in Mid-to-late February of 2010. I’ve been there once before, and have a few customers who have been kind enough to ask me back. Overall, though, this is a new territory for me. If you happen to be a harpist in the area, please get in touch if there’s anything I can do for you. If you know a harpist in the Las Vegas area, won’t you mention this blog entry to them or direct them to my website? Remember, I’m authorized to do the free first year warranty regulations on Lyon & Healy and Salvi Harps, as well as other warranty repairs. Again, let me know if there’s anything I can help you with, and spread the word!

Lever Gut vs. Pedal Gut: Which Harp String Do You Need?

Lever Harps in the Lyon & Healy West Showroom

If you play a Lyon & Healy or Salvi lever harp, you may have noticed that these manufacturers, through their sister company, Bow Brand Strings, produce both “Lever Gut” and “Pedal Gut” strings. You might think that if you own a lever harp, you will want to buy lever gut strings, but it ain’t necessarily so.

Both Lyon & Healy and Salvi produce two varieties of lever harp. Many of the best-known models, such as the Lyon & Healy Prelude, Troubadour, and Ogden, and the Salvi Ana, are designed as “starter pedal harps.”  While they have no pedals,  they are strung with pedal harp strings and mimic the tension, string spacing, and feel of a pedal harp.

Other models, such as the Lyon & Healy Lyric and the Salvi Egan, are designed with folk and Celtic harpers in mind. They are generally lighter in construction and easier to carry, and they feature a lower string tension for easier playing and a brighter sound.

The Lever Gut strings produced by Bow Brand (and available through harp.com, among others) are designed for use with these folk and Celtic harps.

If you’re unsure of what strings to order for your harp, contact Lyon & Healy West. They can advise you over the phone, and send you a chart that shows which strings to buy for each model of Lyon & Healy and Salvi lever harp. No matter what make of harp you play, it’s a great idea to contact the maker and request a stringing chart if you don’t already have one. It’ll make replacing strings that much easier when the time comes.

A Little Bit of Water is Okay

A lot of people look at me funny when I say it’s okay to clean your harp with a damp cloth. “You mean, like, put water on my harp?” they ask me. There’s a commonly held belief that lacquer finishes and water do not mix, and there’s certainly some truth to this. If you let water sit on a lacquered surface – say you keep a potted plant on your piano (please don’t do this!) and overflow from your watering gathers underneath the pot – it will seep into the finish, creating cloudiness or a white ring that is difficult to get rid of. If left unchecked, moisture trapped in a lacquer finish can cause an ugly dark mildew stain.

However, this same lacquered surface, be it a piano or a dining room table or what have you, can be wiped clean with a damp cloth periodically without any damage, especially if you dry it once you’re done. The same is true of your harp. Gently wiping with a damp cloth to prevent the buildup of dirt and grime is good for your harp’s finish. Just wring out the cloth enough so that it isn’t dripping, and make sure you that if any drips or puddles form you wipe them off right away.

I’ve come across a lot of harps that have years worth of dirt, grime, body oils, and lotions built up in commonly touched areas like the upper edges of the body and the upper soundboard. In many cases, this happened not because the owners are neglectful, but because of the misconception that dirt is better for the harp’s finish than water. Believe me, a little water from time to time is better than letting a layer of crud discolor your instrument.

If there is a layer of gunk on your harp, it’s not too late to get it off. Go ahead and gently wipe it with a damp rag. Use something soft, such as a cotton shirt or a polishing cloth from the music store. You can even use a little mild soap for a really dirty harp.  If you apply a little scrubbing pressure, you might cause drips. No worries, just wipe them up.

If you try to start cleaning a really dirty harp, something scary can happen. The place you’re scrubbing may become sticky and gooey, and you may be afraid you’re actually dissolving the finish. The first time this happened to me I nearly had a heart attack. But it’s not the finish you’re dissolving. It’s layer upon layer of lotions, deodorants, body oils, dirt, dust, etc. On contact with water many of these materials go back into solution. They may get sticky and difficult to remove. You may feel like you’re just spreading the gunk around rather than taking it off the harp. The best thing to do here is to wipe of some of the stuff and let the rest dry. Come back later and do the same thing. It make take several cleaning sessions, but eventually, you can get most or all of this stuff off your harp. Trying to clean off a dirty spot all at once may tempt you to use too much water or scrub too hard, and then you really can damage or remove some of the finish. Just take it slow, let the area dry and rest, and keep at it. The dirt took years to get there, and you’ll need to be patient in trying to get it off.

It’s fine to treat your harp like any other fine finished wood surface. It’s better to keep it from getting dirty, and a little moisture is your friend in this task. Just be careful and conservative. You’ll keep your harp looking newer longer, and a clean harp is a lot nicer to play than a filthy one, wouldn’t you agree?

How to Grease a Creaky Pedal Spring

Have you ever had a pedal that started creaking or squeaking whenever you moved it? Most of the time, the cause is a pedal spring that needs a little extra lubrication. Here’s a short video explaining the steps, from removing the base, to removing and greasing the spring, and to getting that base back on again.

How to Tighten a Loose Tuning Pin

In response to a question from a client of mine, here’s a short video on how to tighten up loose tuning pins. It should work on any make of harp that has pins that run all the way through the neck, as opposed to the zither-type (or Autoharp type) pins that are screwed into the string side and tuned from the string side. As I explain in the video, tuning pins tend to work loose, especially when a string is replaced. All that is usually needed is to push them a little deeper into the hole in the neck. The hole is tapered to fit the shape of the pin, so the more you push them, the tighter they will feel and the better they will hold.

I’ve heard of people who try to accomplish this by whacking on the back end of the pins with a hammer or mallet. While this should theoretically work, in practice it rarely seems to, and there’s the danger of that hammer going where you don’t want it to. Try my approach and see how it works for you.

Replacing Harp Strings 102: 4th and 5th Octave Knots

Here’s another of the great videos Michele Rassmussen shot at a harp care class I gave at Lyon & Healy West. Here, I focus on the knot used to anchor 4th and 5th octave nylon or gut strings. While you would use a string anchor of some kind to tie strings in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd octaves (I use one-inch pieces of 5th octave A,B, and C gut strings), the 4th and 5th octave strings are so thick that no anchor is necessary, and using one only makes the whole operation that much more difficult.

One of the trickiest things about the larger gut strings is how stiff and strong they are. The key to coaxing them into a knot is to weaken the part you want to work with by pulling it between your finger and thumb with a slight bending motion, as you see in the video. When you’ve done this successfully, the gut will turn from opaque to white. The trick, which comes with practice, is in not weakening any more of the string than you need to tie your knot.

With the larger nylon strings, you have the opposite problem. There is nothing you can do to weaken the nylon, so it keeps fighting back. Learning to tie them takes practice and patience. Or, if you prefer, you can avoid them and only string your 4th and 5th octaves in gut. I know gut is much more expensive, but nylon strings in this register really don’t sound good on pedal harps (and pedal-tensioned lever harps). And no, the string makers are not paying me to say this!

A New Issue of the Newsletter is Now Available

The latest issue of my supposed-to-be-quarterly-but-I-haven’t-managed-that-yet newsletter, also called The Harp Herald, is now available at  http://mossharpservice.com/files/HarpHeraldSummer2009-8.pdf. The main topic of this issue’s article is how to adjust your pedal brass (and when you’re better off letting someone else do it). Please download it and check it out. And don’t forget to join my mailing list and you’ll receive future issues of the Herald automatically.

Moss Harp Service to Visit Sioux Falls, SD

Moss Harp Service will be setting up shop at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on June 18-21, 2009. This time will coincide with the final days of Augustana Summer Music Camp, so if you are traveling to Sioux Falls for the camp, consider having your harp regulated at that time.

The deadline to secure an appointment slot is May 27, 2009. Please contact me at steve@mossharpservice.com to let me know you are interested.

Replacing Harp Strings 101: Tying String Knots

During a recent harp care class I gave at Lyon & Healy West in Salt Lake City, one of the attendees, Michele Rasmussen, was kind enough to shoot a few videos of me demonstrating some techniques for replacing harp strings. The videos came out great so I thought I’d post them here and include some additional explanation as well. The first one is shown above. The others will follow soon.

The technique shown in this video applies to the first, second, and third octaves (and the “zero octave” F and G strings at the top of some harps). For these octaves, it’s important to use some kind of anchor that is thicker than the string you’re using, to insure that the string knot doesn’t pull into the hole and get stuck there. Trust me, you don’t want THAT to happen!

My anchor of choice is a one inch (2.5 cm) piece of 5th octave A,B, or C string, the three thickest gut strings on the harp. At Lyon & Healy we were trained that only these three strings were thick enough to provide a stable anchor. I haven’t tested this for myself, but I have seen instances where harps were anchored with thinner strings, and you can see them bend under the string tension. If they’re bending, do you think that string is going to stay in tune?

The video shows how I tie the knot around the anchor. I’m using a piece of nylon here. The same technique works for gut strings, but they’re a little trickier to work with because they’re stiffer. Stay tuned for another video in this series where I demonstrate tying 4th and 5th octave string knots. There, I use a gut string and you can see the technique for breaking the integrity of the gut fibers so you can form the necessary loops for your knot. If you don’t want to wait for that blog post, you can watch all three videos now on this web page.

Thanks again to Michele. I’ve been meaning to make videos like these for a long time. I hope they are helpful. If you have questions, please leave me a comment.