harpcolumn

Double String Debate

Log in to your Harp Column account to post or reply in the forums. If you don’t have an account yet, you’ll need to email us to set one up.

Home Forums Harps and Accessories Double String Debate

Viewing 15 posts - 31 through 45 (of 103 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #213796
    balfour-knight
    Participant

    Thanks, Tacye, for posting the video. Now I, too, am quite fascinated with this style of harp!

    #213800
    tanyanoel
    Participant

    Tayce, I second that, what a great video I had no idea!

    #213823
    Elettaria
    Member

    I’m a member of the Clarsach Society, and they are mostly about lever harps. They have a wire branch, but it’s much smaller and occasionally on the verge of closing down. The Clarsach Society rents out harps, I’m renting from them myself, and as far as I know they’re all lever harps. Pilgrims, usually, with the odd Starfish.

    I have been planning to get a small harp built locally for ages, Biagio was giving me advice a while back, and I have finally fallen for double harps, as he had indeed suggested. Right now I’m still looking into materials and sorting out string charts and such, so it may end up being very lightly strung with a cardboard soundbox, or it may be all wood, depending on various factors. If it’s wood, Mae McAllister is talking me into considering having the right side strung higher than the left side and putting a few wound nylon strings in the bass on the left side. I’m thinking a third or fourth higher, but hopefully I will meet Mae and her double strung harp first (which has the two sides a fifth apart but is also built a lot more sturdily). I remember Biagio saying that it would make sense to build a harp that way a while back in this forum.

    #213846
    Biagio
    Participant

    If (and it is a fairly major “if” ha ha) one wishes one side higher (or lower) than the other it seems to me most sensible to make the difference a major rather than a minor.

    So that leaves you with a sub-dominant (4th) dominant (5th) or god help us an octave. Of those three I would suggest the fifth as the most practical. Just be sure that the two sides are at about the same tension. That would be for a fairly small harp – say 23-26 strings per side. Any larger and your levers will do the job with a lot less design trouble.

    Biagio

    #213865
    Elettaria
    Member

    I was planning to go for a very simple design, since whoever is building it won’t be experienced in making harps, so no levers and just 20 strings each side. Does the major/minor thing matter if it’s all purely diatonic anyway? I hadn’t thought of that, thanks for flagging it up. Realistically the plan is to keep chatting to local folks about wood and such, and hopefully try Mae’s harp some time (she lives fairly local to me) and see how I get on with it. Since it’ll need to be a small harp with fairly short string lengths (a bit longer than the Waring ones but shorter than yours), I assume that means less flexibility in how much we can change the notes around. According to my string charts, a fourth should be doable and matches other string designs in terms of length, I’d just need to work out wound strings and such. (I keep staring at photos of small harps like the Blevins ones to work out how many of their bottom strings are wound, and comparing measurements to get an idea of the string lengths.) I got hold of string designs for a number of small harps – yours, Eve, Brittany, Limerick, Waring – and put them all into a spreadsheet with graphs to compare the length, gauge and tension, which is being helpful. Plus the magic spreadsheet for calculating everything you linked me to, of course, which is where they all start.

    I’ve not been playing the harp much recently due to illness, but yesterday I was trying playing without looking at the strings to see how I got on. It went fairly well. The pain flare afterwards was crap, and for some reason my fingertips hurt even though they weren’t cold, but playing without looking wasn’t too bad. I’m already used to it from piano, and orchestral percussion way back in the day, although with piano you get more clues from your peripheral vision. I gather you move around the right side by memory, mostly? I’ve been watching Carolyn Deal’s videos, and I found it very reassuring when she said not to worry about seeing two distinct rows of strings, she gets double vision and hasn’t a hope of doing that, but she still manages to play it using other ways of keeping track of the strings. It does sound a little harder to do that if the sides are offset (does “offset” make sense for stringing one side down to E and the other down to A or whatever?), but on the other hand you then get more of a range and by the sound of it, better-sounding strings. Apologies for doubting you when you suggested a double strung the other year, you were quite right!

    Although if it’s a cardboard soundbox, I imagine I’ll revert to the lighter stringing plan I have that’s a tweaked version of the Waring, and not mess about with offset sides. I rang one local-ish sawmill and got a delightful chap, who said he has an old friend who makes ukuleles and such, and who may be able to put together a small harp for me on a budget. I am waiting hopefully to hear back from them. There may be a chance of spalted beech *swoon*.

    #213873
    Biagio
    Participant

    Just a few general thoughts Elettaria, since your design is more or less in the beginning stage:

    – The cardboard box is strictly an acoustic chamber on something like the Waring; the thick central rib takes all the strain. So make sure that rib will not split.

    -Study Rick Kemper’s plan for his Waldorf harp to see how easy a simple harp actually is to make. Then modify it to suit for size, as a double if you want, and so on. As a double, your builder might make that neck-pillar joint simply by using pocket hole screws, since the torque is the same on both sides. Or just stay with a butt joint but put a reinforcing patch on both sides. If middle-schoolers can make the Waldorf, so can you (or your friend). http://www.sligoharps.com/plans

    – When you pluck one string on a double the adjacent one will sound as well and the fifth is one of the harmonics. Hence my suggestion. You could choose any other interval of course, but it might not be so pleasing to your ear.

    – Real wood is of course nice but for a first try you might make the whole thing out of good quality plywood: baltic birch for the box and neck-pillar, Finnish birch laminate for the SB. I’ve made several like that: the box sides were 6mm thick ply with maple liners, the NP two 18mm pieces glued together.

    Biagio

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by Biagio.
    #213875
    wil-weten
    Participant

    I agree very much with Biagio. And I would certainly choose an interval of a fifth between the rows for the reason Biagio mentions.

    #213876
    Elettaria
    Member

    I’ve been carefully reading Rick’s site and plans, they’re great.

    I do have a harp maker offering me offcuts of birch ply, as it so happens, which we’d have to put in the post. Presumably if it ends up being the same price or cheaper to get local timber that the guy making it can just pick up (he’s old friends with the guy who runs the sawmill), I’m better off doing that, though, and just using birch ply for the soundboard? The price the same harp maker quoted me for nylon was slightly more than I’ve been quoted for KF from another harp maker, at which point I may as well get KF and enjoy it.

    Note on neck-pillar construction – copied into my notes along with other useful things you’ve said, thank you!

    Good point about the harmonics, I hadn’t thought of that. How much difference do you think it’d make? The thing that’s putting me off a fifth interval is if the two sides are further apart in pitch, I presume it makes it harder to get the stringing right. I want it to be very low tension so that we can keep the frame light, and have been aiming for stringing not much heavier than the Waring harp even if it’s with a wooden soundbox. I also want to minimise wound strings because I have to import them and that ends up expensive, as well as making it harder to tweak. So two or three wound strings on the left is one thing, but Mae ended up with two octaves of them and that’s more than I can afford. On the other hand, I am still learning about the ways of KF and I don’t know how far we could push it using that, as it sounds more flexible in this respect.

    Here is the current sketch, about 26″ tall, and quite slim-built as it started off looking like the Waring. I’m not going to ask anyone to put levers on it, that takes it up to a whole new level of time and skill and expense and weight, so the plan was to skip bridge pins as well. Here are the current string lengths, which I originally designed to run down to the F below middle C. I now have string charts all over the place with various options, including moving the left side down to E for the bottom note and the right side down to A. If I do that, the left side matches the string lengths from the Musicmakers Limerick fairly well, and the right side matches the string lengths for Biagio’s little 23 x 2 harp.

    #213879
    Elettaria
    Member

    The Waldorf is great, but it’s built on a much bigger scale than I’m looking for, from string lengths to tension to general weight of the beast. I’m making notes from it, though.

    With regards to string ribs for doubles, I’ve seen two options for how the two courses of strings are spaced relative to each other at the soundboard. Stoney End has them close together, 1/2″ apart, and using a single string rib. Dusty Strings has them more widely spaced so that the strings remain parallel, and uses two string ribs with a gap in between. I’ve seen Biagio talking somewhere about how you lose more of the soundboard on either side of the string rib(s) with a double and thus have less space to vibrate, so I thought the Stoney End approach sounded better as well as easier to construct. It sounds like neither approach allows you to magically see both rows of strings distinctly anyway, so no need to worry about that.

    #213880
    Biagio
    Participant

    Well, frankly if someone has never made a harp before I’d suggest keeping things as simple as possible. So I’d make both rows the same and all nylon a la that 23. I estimate that cost me only $200 US at most. After you are comfortable with putting ideas into practice, then experiment with more exotic ideas.

    #213881
    Elettaria
    Member

    Cheers, good to know. It works out a fair bit cheaper as well. Is it worth getting bigger eyelets and reaming out the bottom few zither pins on the left side, in case it works out well and I decide to restring it later?

    #213882
    Elettaria
    Member

    The nylon strings genuinely are more expensive for me, by the way. Probably because they’re imported from the US but the KF is imported from France. Some of the gauges of the nylon aren’t even available here and would have to come over from the US, especially the top ones.

    Elm wood is a possibility and I hear it’s rather nice, but a few people have said it’s too unstable, do you agree? Ash is on offer as well, possibly yew. He doesn’t have any cherry in at the moment but might at some other point. If spalted beech is available, and that’s a stunning-looking wood, should I go for it? European beech not American beech, apparently it’s better for harp-making than the American one (Teifi uses plain beech, Callan in Ireland has made some nice flamed beech harps). The naming of plants gets confusing, it really does. All the local timber merchants just sell oak and meranti. I knew oak wasn’t recommended but meranti is sometimes used for budget guitars or ukuleles, so I looked into it. It turns out to vary wildly, probably not be good enough for harps, and one local supplier was convinced they were actually selling mahogany (they really weren’t, especially not at £4.20/m). Though at the stage where I was looking at using meranti and the cardboard soundbox, the plan was to get a big plank of 1/2″ thick, use that on its own for the soundboard, and laminate it to three layers for the neck and pillar, with maple in the middle for the neck (there’s some shelving around). Still not sure whether it is worth laminating anything if I get a better wood.

    #213887
    wil-weten
    Participant

    I haven’t got a clue about the tension of the nylon wound strings, but if some of the Dusty bass nylon wound strings could be used, you could order them from a Dusty Dealer in the UK or somewhere in Europe.
    E.g.: http://www.morleyharps.co.uk/dusty-string-nylon-wound-strings-c102x2720266 from Morley Harps in the UK.

    Edit: it would surprise me if you couldn’t get all the nylon strings you want in Europe. Do you need them thinner than 0.25″ otherwise, see: http://www.morleyharps.co.uk/dusty-string-monofilament-strings-c102x2720140? with the thinnest nylon string being 0,25″

    Or perhaps this stringing is more or less what you are looking for, also from Morley Harps in the UK: http://www.morleyharps.co.uk/county-kerry-24-c102x2721404

    Maybe you won’t find monofilament red or blue strings that fit your string scheme, but it is possible to colour nylon strings (there are special recipes for that).

    Edit2: And this link of Morley Harps of the lightly stringed Triplett Christina harp may have some suitable nylon wound strings as well:
    http://www.morleyharps.co.uk/christina-25-c102x2721551

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by wil-weten.
    • This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by wil-weten.
    #213890
    Elettaria
    Member

    I think it’s still cheaper to get KF, yep. Especially as I’d rather skip dyeing if I can. It depends on what lengths Morley sells. Last time I tried nylon it went out of tune much faster than KF and I wasn’t thrilled with the tone. Do you reckon it’d be better?

    I’ve written down the different wound strings Morley has in case I need them, yep. Although I agree with Biagio that I may as well string it the same on both sides since it’s my first harp-building experiment. As far as I know, I should be able to do the whole thing in KF if I go down to F, which I’m quite happy with. It gives me the subdominant chord for C major in the bass, and the D at the top is useful for D dorian.

    Here’s the planned stringing scheme in nylon, and it’d be the equivalent in KF. I can get the KF supplied locally in any colour and any gauge, so he’d probably tidy up my stringing chart a wee bit, but this gives us an idea. I can put in the charts comparing it to other harps if you like. It’s strung closest to the Waring, just slightly heavier, but still lighter than the Stoney End Eve and the Musicmakers Limerick. The plan is that this will allow me to keep the frame really light, and I don’t mind having something easier on my fingers either.

    D – 5.90″ – 0.022″
    C – 6.55″ – 0.022″
    B – 7.15″ – 0.022″
    A – 7.75″ – 0.022″
    G – 8.40″ – 0.025″
    F – 9.00″ – 0.025″
    E – 9.80″ – 0.028″
    D – 10.55″ – 0.028″
    C – 11.40″ – 0.028″
    B – 12.20″ – 0.032″
    A – 13.10″ – 0.032″
    G – 14.10″ – 0.032″
    F – 15.10″ – 0.036″
    E – 16.10″ – 0.036″
    D – 17.15″ – 0.036″
    C – 18.25″ – 0.040″
    B – 19.50″ – 0.045″
    A – 20.70″ – 0.045″
    G – 21.90″ – 0.050″
    F – 23.20″ – 0.055″

    Thanks to both of you for looking over all of this, I really appreciate it!

    #213891
    Biagio
    Participant

    Look: first decide on your string design, then dither about wood. Ash, beech, elm, maple, cherry are all fine. You have a design spread sheet which does the math for you.

    Decide on your string design first (he said for the nth time). I don’t have time to analyze this but would question the range you chose (F to d) from a musical standpoint. Why not a bass G or C?? Think about what music you will be playing, not just about what are available. If you are going to that much work it is better spend a little more money.

    Also those treble strings will sound tinkly and feel pretty thin.

    I admit that Rick’s Waldorf is larger than it needs to be – that’s just his way, he’s an engineer. Look rather at how he puts the box together. Even that could be simpler. Here’s what I do on something like this, once I’m happy with the string band:

    1) Lay out a template for the box facing up to get the angles for the top and bottom blocks. A typical one would be 85 degrees at the bottom and 95 at the top. I think a wider SB and two ribs spaced 5cm apart gives better volume and finger room but that’s up to you.

    2) Make a fixture the length of the box so you can clamp the top and bottom blocks to it, centered. Then just cut and glue on the sides.

    3) Glue in liners on both sides to give more glue surface, back and front (this assumes thin, 6mm sides).

    If you have drafted your templates carefully and transferred them accurately to the wood that’s the only “hard” part.

    KF is higher tension than nylon at the same length and frequency – higher than gut in fact, and on a harp this size will not sound any better. But if that’s what you want, go for it.

    Don’t get ahead of yourself!

    Biagio

Viewing 15 posts - 31 through 45 (of 103 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.