Just wondering what all the harpists are up to as we haven't had a thread for quite a while.

I have started some new pieces - about grade 3 level and am working hard on technique (I am a very slow learner!!). Might do a grade exam sometime on the horizon but probably not before next summer session as I am up to my eyes on grade 8 piano and theory. Don't think my stress levels (or my technique) could cope with exam just yet!!

Plus I sold a harp and bought another!

Elizabeth

Hi. I'm still plugging away, and my daughter has taken up the harp as well! She has managed to do in 3 lessons what I did in 3 months, sigh, but it is great to see her progressing so well. We are plotting the purchase of a pedal harp...

I'm learning some pieces from Bernard Andres' Automates - quite tricky, but I'm loving them. Big stretches in the left hand. I think my technique is improving because I had my first lesson of term this week, and I hadn't developed any horrible new habits over the summer break (in contrast to previous breaks of 2 - 3 weeks during which I managed to pick up some horrendous technical glitches!)

Now there are two of you playing you can definitely justify the purchase of a pedal harp

Hello! I'm still here, though haven't swung by for a while. I'm still chipping away at it. I have grade 1 theory and grade 3 practical in November. It's a lot of hard work! Expensive too! However, I needed direction. I was learning stuff aimlessly and wasn't really getting a feeling of progress, so I thought I'd bite the bullet and do the grades.

Good luck with your exams, SM.

Even the sheet music seems to be more expensive for harp....

Help, please? I'm hoping that one of you experienced harpists out there might be able to answer some questions for me.

Middle daughter (age 10) has been going on about the harp for months. She already plays the violin (Gr 3) and a bit of piano. I have managed to find a teacher in the area who might have a space for her. Teacher recommends starting on a Pilgrim Progress pedal harp - but Pilgrim don't have any available for rental and don't expect to have for the foreseeable future. They have offered me a second hand Progress which they are selling and have said that it will hold its value if she doesn't take to the harp and I need to re-sell it.

So my questions are - does anyone know if the bit about resale values is right? And is there a strong market for second (or third) hand harps? And is there anywhere else that does rentals of Progress harps? We are in SE England and I can't find anything on the Internet. Would be really grateful for any help as I feel totally clueless about this. I suppose it should give me more empathy for the parents of my violin pupils when they are trying to choose instruments. But this is all a bit more expensive than a beginner violin.....

I'm not quite sure about market for second hand harps, but to start with, you don't really need to buy (or even rent) a pedal harp. It's fine to just rent a lever harp for a while. When I started I rented a Pilgrim Clarsarch (which I was very pleased with) from the Clarsarch Society and it costed about £20-30 a month. I only bought a pedal harp many months down the road when I was sure I'd stick with it.

I had a Pilgrim lever harp - it was lovely! I have also been told harps retain their value, and that was certainly the case when I traded in my Pilgrim for my Venus Penti Grand Concert. In fact, as I was trading it up from the same shop I bought it from, they even gave me the full value of the lever to use against the pedal (minus £30 for a scratch when my daughter knocked it over onto her dolls house).

I would watch out for exchange rates though. This may not apply to European harps so much, such as Salvi or Camac, but if you buy a US harp (like I did) fluctuations in the dollar versus sterling could mean the value of your harp drops significantly. I could buy my Venus Penti (a US harp) brand new for about £12k presently, which is what I bought my 2 year old ex-rental for two years ago.

That said, I'm told that sometimes an older harp can sometimes sell for more than it was brand new, as it would have had a chance to 'settle in', meaning less variation in tuning and suchlike.

Either way, it's not like a car, that loses £1,000 in value the minute it leaves the showroom. However, it may be wise to compare second hand harp prices to their new counterparts.

I hope that's of some help! I expect more experienced harpists will be able to expand on my points, and answer your other questions.

Harps do hold their value quite well, but can be a hassle to resell and take a while. Pilgrim Progress harps are nice instruments, and I had one for several years, but I spend a year on a hired non-pedal Progress first. Financially we would have been better off buying second hand and then reselling rather than hiring. Pilgrim Clarsachs (portable) or Teifi Eos (big sound) are good instruments with good hire programmes and concert harp tension which may be acceptable to your teacher, especially if you acknowledge that you expect to acquire a pedal harp shortly after your daughter passes grade 3.

Remember when looking at prices that a set of bass wires for a Progress would be about £100 and servicing another £100+ If you buy from Pilgrim this should have been done and they will tell you all about it- there are cheaper Pilgrims out there, such as the affairs of the harp website, but they may need a check up and new strings.

Harps are portable instruments for tax purposes so if you can buy through your daughter's school or LEA then you can avoid VAT on new instruments.

Sorry, it's taken me a while to get back with a progress report! Many thanks for all the replies and helpful information. In the end, I've crossed my fingers and hoped that daughter will be playing for a good long time so have bought the second hand Progress. I hope that I'm going to look back in a few years time and be pleased about all the rental fees I've saved!

It arrived on Friday and so far I have managed to tune it twice without breaking anything (touch wood). Those bass strings are tough on the fingers!

First lesson tomorrow so I might be back with a whole new set of questions......

Anyway, thanks again to all who replied