Harp Tone....

                I'd say about 80% of the tone from my harps is coming from the soundboard, so that is the most critical component regarding sound quality. As far as beauty of tone, there's nothing that beats a solid, un-veneered coniferous wood like spruce or cedar in volume, harmonics (overtones) & clarity. If you want the best in these qualities for your harp, it's best to have a solid wood soundboard, as veneering can reduce the quality of tone by about 15-20%.  This is certainly more noticeable on the lightly strung harps than on the higher-tensioned ones.

    From what I've seen, about 90% of North American-made harps have veneered soundboards. Perhaps the major reason for this is that veneering adds to the strength and stability of the somewhat vulnerable soundboard, which is subject not only to stresses exerted by the considerable tension of the strings, but to the extremes of our North American climate, especially the ultra-dry conditions that can exist in heated homes during the cold, dry winter, and conversely, the dryness of the desert areas, especially in air conditioned homes & cars.  

    Like wine tasting, harp tasting has developed it's own vocabulary to describe the tone of  a harp. You'll hear words like 'warm', 'full', 'balanced', 'bright', 'dark', 'muddy', 'clear', 'sweet', 'dry', 'woody', and so on. For instance, some have characterized western red cedar's tone as woody, warmer, bass-ier & with more volume. Add to that the tonal characteristics of the woods that the soundbox is made of, the maker's construction techniques (wood thickness, bracing, etc.), and the choice of strings & string tension, and you have the total 'tone' of the harp. Fluorocarbon strings have the brightest, clearest, most focussed tone, with gut the most soft & muted, and nylon falling somewhere in between.

    Oh, while I'm at it: The round back harp body (AKA soundbox) that I use is made from birch/luan bending ply, with a thin veneer on the outside to match the structural hardwoods of the harp. The choice of hardwoods for the neck, pillar and veneer on the body have almost no bearing on the tone of the harp, as it's all going to pretty much sound the same whether the harp is cherry or walnut (for instance). On my harps, the relative stiffness of the soundboard wood, it's thickness and 'profiling' will give the most difference in tone.

        To ensure as much stability as possible in the soundboard, my wood is seasoned at 110 degrees F. till it stabilizes at 15% relative humidity. The string ribs are then glued in place, and the soundboard kept in the drying box until it's ready to be assembled to the body.

 

A Bit of History....

      In ancient times, the harp necks & pillars were made from solid hardwoods like oak, sycamore, cherry, hornbeam and walnut, and the sound boxes were made of a solid hardwood block, such as willow, hollowed out from the back side. If we go back, say, to the first representations of harps in the British Isles around the 7-8th C., we find on the one hand, smallish, robusty-built metal-strung harps and on the other hand taller, more lightly-built gut or horsehair strung harps with a mare's skin sounding membrane stretched over the hollowed-out box. Of course, these two harps had completely different tonal qualities and playing techniques.

        During the renaissance & baroque eras, one still found the metal-strung harps made in the historic manner, but the gut-strung ones were tending to have 'built-up' sound boxes made of numerous pieces of wood glued together, with a coniferous soft wood for the sounding board such as Swiss or Bavarian spruce, and a deciduous hardwood staved box made usually of sycamore (European maple) or perhaps a fruit wood like apple or cherry   

    In the 1790's a curved, round, ply sound box was developed by the French pedal harp makers that was stronger, lighter and more easily built than the heavier and more complicated barrel stave (or coopered) sound boxes. In Ireland, John Egan, a pedal harp maker located in Dublin, Ireland, in the early 1800's, developed the 'Royal Irish Portable' small harp which became quite popular. It featured a round back, solid alpine spruce soundboard and the structural woods were sycamore, painted green.

    A hundred years later, others such as John Briggs, of Glasgow, and Melville Clarke, of New York, made great strides in developing the small 'Celtic' harp, generally called the 'traditional harp' in Ireland, and the 'clarsach' in Scotland. The Clarke Harp Company was eventually taken over by Lyon & Healy Harps, and they were taken over a few years ago by Salvi.