Harp Myth 4

How To Buy A Harp

This article is the fourth in an extended series of articles addressing issues and myths surrounding traditional harps and their construction.

Apples and Oranges - Purchasing a Harp

For the sake of comparison, there are six things a person needs to know about any given harp.

Apple or Orange? What is the target market for the harp? Who is the intended customer? A harp built for a beginner and one built for a professional will be very different harps. They will sound, feel and, to some degree, play differently. The pricing will reflect all of this. A concert quality harp built for a professional is usually heavier and larger than a beginner's harp. Often it will have several more strings and it will always have full sharping. More critically, its projection cone will be narrow near the harp and much greater twenty to fifty feet in front of the instrument. This means that the energy coming off of the front of the soundboard is thrust as far forward as possible for the benefit of the audience. When concert violinists go to purchase a new instrument, they bring another violinist along. After getting the feel of the perspective violin, the buyer hands the violin to the associate. While the associate plays, the buyer walks out into the hall and takes a seat at various points around the room. Think about it this way, if an instrument is putting a significant amount of energy into the space right around the musician's ears, then that energy cannot also be around the audience's ears. A concert quality harp should sound markedly different in tonal quality to the person sitting behind it playing than it does to those out front. A beginner's harp, on the other hand, should be putting its energy into the space right around the player. A beginner needs to have every advantage possible to learn to breath the sense of the music and the nature of the instrument.

Sweet or Sour? What is the intended voice of the instrument? Then, does it have that voice and is the voice it does have the one that is wanted? In guitars, pickers generally choose small body guitars and strummers go for dreadnoughts. This is because small body guitars have less sustain allowing individual notes to sound more clearly and the smaller soundboard is more sensitive to higher frequencies. The dreadnought acoustics produce big, full bass tones and their longer sustain keeps cords ringing, filling the space behind a singer's voice. Good harps are also designed with a specific voice in mind. The tonal variants in well made harps will be sustain, brightness vs. bass, volume and projection cone, degree of clarity, balance and harmonic response. The key in selecting a voice is in matching the desired voice to the intended purpose. Bardic players, for instance, intend their harps to speak in one way while wedding music begs for another sound entirely. A harp must be matched both to the musician's ear and to its intended venue.

Price per pound? At first pass, it would seem that price would be the one thing that would be directly comparable - but it is not. While, to some degree, price is a reflection of quality, it is much more complex. Lutheries that do not have dealers are able to sell at their basic rate without having to pad the pricing with the retailer's cut. Therefore, a harp priced at $3,000 in a store should cost around $2,000 if it comes from a strictly direct lutherie. Additionally, as with all other products, prices are inflated by things like reputation, marketing costs and limited supply. Conversely, prices are deflated by a production environment, over abundance, and lack of reputation (as it relates strictly to name recognition). The key is to pay attention to just exactly what each dollar is going toward and the goal is to direct as much money as possible toward the harp itself.

How Fresh? In terms of comparing one harp to another, materials will make all the difference in the world . Solid spruce combined with solid maple; solid redwood paired with solid walnut; and birch laminate mated to cherry all have radically different voices. When choosing the woods, the very best way is to compare "apples to apples" by listening to both woods on the same model of harp by the same luthier, thus limiting the variables.

Where was the fruit picked? The name of any given luthier is not important but the quality of the craftsmanship is everything. A harp can have a fabulous voice and be a dream to play but if it pulls itself apart it becomes both worthless and silent. A good harp is the second most difficult of all stringed instruments to build. A bad harp is a cinch. Be wary. Joints should be tight and perfect. The mechanical design of the harp unstrung should be such that it is specifically made to compensate for the extreme force applied when the strings are up to tension. The finish should be smooth and never cloudy. Finally, spiffy carving and decorations in and of themselves only mean that the piece is a good ornament, it takes much more to make a quality harp ­ ignore the fu­fu­ra until the harp has been found to be both sound and well voiced.

One bad apple.... The idea of paying attention to the warranty is not simply a question of what would happen if something should go wrong. The real issue is to what degree the builder is willing to stand behind the work. Three years is not very long when one considers that a good harp should be an instrument able to be passed down to your children.

Peaches, cherries and apples ­ they all make wonderful pies. Diversity is strength. The harp community is invigorated by a variety of harp voices, playing techniques and a spectrum of lutheries.

 

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