Buying a used harp

If you have tried to find an old harp or have read the article on these pages you will appreciate that they are hard to find.
If you want to start playing the harp I would advise buying a modern instrument if you can finance it - you may well be better doing a bit of overtime to fund a loan than spending the time necessary to repair an old one. Also get the advice of a harp teacher or harpist before buying anything. Old instruments of any kind have their foibles, and technology hasn't stood still since the last century.

One of the best places to find an instrument in good working order is via Jack Hayward's list:
Jack Hayward, 5 Sun Gardens, Burghfield Common, Reading , England. Tel (44) 118 983 3922, Fax (44) 118 983 3868

I have seen a few harps go for reasonable prices at auction at Bonhams in London - they have regular sales of instruments.

If you are getting an old instrument the things to watch out for are:

• Is the maker recognised as OK? - there are quite a few no-hopers out there.

• Check for woodworm - especially inside the pedal box. The worms don't eat their way out of the gilding (cos it isn't wood!)

• Check that all the pedals operate and all the forks move at least a bit. Stripping down the mechanism is quite a task.

• Check the semitone forks and the threaded shafts that they are screwed on to - if any of those shafts is damaged, or if the screw thread is damaged, you will have to dismantle all of the action to put in a new shaft - not impossible, but a major operation. On our harp one of the shafts had been soldered to the fork - I managed to repair the thread without dismantling everything, but I was sweating!

• Check the brass action plates carefully for cracks - if they are cracked the harp is probably best used for landfill.

• The necks of harps gradually attain a permanent twist under the influence of the string tension - check that the strings are still being gripped by the semitone forks - look at the sharp forks near the middle of the neck. If they are only a couple of millimetres out you can correct it by making longer fork pins, but beyond that you will need a new neck. This isn't the end of the world, but reckon on about 800 UK pounds to have the job done.

• Any instrument that hasn't been played for some time is going to need a set of strings - which come at about UKP 400 per go - so bear that in mind when you are working out the financial viability of a restoration.

Good Luck!

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