Rental Harp with No Harp Key?

[nicollette]

My daughter is currently renting a lever harp at school, a great distance away from our home. We have a harp at home and she is used to helping care for it, etc. I am not personally in contact with the owners of the harp she is renting. It has come to our attention that the rental harp did not come with a harp key. I’m flabbergasted by this. Is this a common thing? Every harp I’ve rented came with a key, and the harp we purchased came with a key. I can’t imagine that one would rent a harp but that it would not come with a key for tuning.

Am I missing something here? I’m not sure if I should be upset at being required to purchase a key or if this is more common that perhaps I’m aware of.

Thanks for any insight.

~ nicollette

[Miriam Shilling]

Nicollette, when I was doing research for one of my students, I found two harps which were being offered for sale without tuning keys. That definitely seemed fishy to me. As a first step, try contacting the person your daughter is renting her harp from and ask if perhaps he/she forgot to include the tuning key. If there is no tuning key, ask how they were tuning the harp. Unfortunately, you have already rented the harp. Normally, if the answer is, “I have not been tuning the harp,” I stay far away from that instrument. It’s probably been neglected. I wish I could be more helpful as far as where to obtain a key without paying for one, but, hopefully, someone else will comment on your post, too.

[wil-weten]

Miriam gave great advice.

As the harp is rented from school, I expect the school to provide for a fitting key. In the first place because harps use to be rented with a fitting key. And in the second place because an ill-fitting key may damage the tuning pins.

[Sylvia]

They probably forgot to include it. When I bought my first pedal harp (1971)from L-H in Chicago, they shipped it to me with no tuning key. I had to make a long-distance call to tell them. (at that time, it was expensive to call) They sounded embarrassed and promised to send it right away, which they did.
I would tell the renter they forgot to include the key and ask them for it.

[Tacye]

As Sylvia says, it could be a simple slip. My L&H also was shipped without a key and it followed later when I asked.

[carl-swanson]

At the very least, the owner of the instrument should have asked you if you needed a tuning key. I rent harps, both pedal and lever, all the time, and I don’t like to include the tuning key, because most of the time the renter forgets to give it back to me when they return the harp. I always ask them if they need a key and a lot of times they don’t because they were renting something else before mine, or they have another instrument already and so don’t need a tuning key. Since all my harps use the standard pedal harp tuning key, they can buy a standard tuning key at a number of places. Your rental lever harp may have odd size tuning pins, and therefore need a special tuning key for those pins. You should sort this out with the owner of the instrument.

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