Autoharp Progress Report

I finished the chordbars, but haven't built any buttons yet. I've tried two temporary solutions, and actually my first-try little yellow buttons were better than the current bigger green ones. It also sucks that I labeled the sticks on the stick, not the button (with little peel-and-stick labels). If the buttons are the labels, it's obvious which label applies to which button (duh), but you have to lift your fingers to see the labels. This way you can see the labels all the time, but it's hard to correlate which is which. Dilemma. I think the original machine's solution is that the labels are on the (slanted) front surface of the (quite tall) buttons. I think I like that approach, but it won't work with the "T-shaped" buttons I'm thinking of -- unless I'm significantly cleverer with the table saw than I think I am...

I was thinking that the buttons are typically way taller than they need to be, as evidenced by the mighty-thin yellow ones I made. But now I'm starting to think, conversely, that really tall buttons my relieve some of the wrist-tweak problems. You can rest the heel of your hand on the "deck" of the bank of chord bars, and if the buttons are, say, 3/4" tall, your wrist won't be so bent to push 'em. I'll have to experiment with that before I start cutting wood.

Autoharp Remodel

Well, over the long weekend, I had time to build the new chord bars for my autoharp. It took longer than I thought it would, 'cuz although they're "just sticks", they need to be (reasonably) *accurate* sticks. Also, since I lowered the "action" (a lot), it mattered that the bass end strings ride higher than the treble end (because they're wound and really thick) -- so I had to taper the sticks to compensate.

Anyway, I ended up using "fun foam", which is a 1/16" thick, really cheap, "Arts-n-Crafts" material -- basically a modern equivalent of Construction Paper for kids to make flowers and butterflies with. It's about the right softness, though I'd have liked it to be a bit thicker. It seems to be working at least as well as the original felt.

Of course, I suddenly couldn't play with the theory anymore, I had to "cut bait", so I decided on a final (for now) layout. I moved the "long row" (8 buttons) to the "bottom" (as seen by the incoming left hand, when the 'harp is held upright), and the "short row" (7 buttons) to the top. This is opposite to default, but it put the 2m and 6m under the thumb when the 4, 1, 5 are under the three strong fingers. The 6m is a bit tucked under the index finger (on the 4 chord), but it's easily workable, having (now) tried it. The picture makes it pretty clear (but discount the apparent location of the pinky -- that's accidental, the pinky isn't used except for long leaps to "accidental" chords).

Building the chords themselves wasn't hard -- I had just glued a slab of Fun Foam to a chunk of wood, and sawed the whole thing up into sticks, with the Foam already on 'em. I just had to trim little "V"s out of the Foam where I wanted a string to sound. The chords worked out OK, except the G#m is pretty weak. The two top octaves are "complete", but the bass octave is missing the D#, G# and A#. This leaves the G# chord without not only a Bass 1, but also a bass 5. I cut it anyway, and figured it'd be OK since it's not used much. But I'm thinking that if, in fact, it's not used much, I might decide to replace it with, say, D#dim or something. Or, maybe, C/b -- though those are pretty far-fetched, too. I do have three spare un-notched sticks, so I can experiment.

But my two bigger concerns at this point are (1) I don't have any push buttons -- the ShopSmith burned through a belt just as I finished the sticks, so I couldn't build the button stock. As an interim solution, I used little rectangles of peel-and-stick (bright yellow) Fun Foam (!), which, since my action is so low, work pretty well, despite being only 1/16" "tall". I also just wrote the chord names on 'em with fine-point Sharpie, so that was handy.

The second problem is inherent in Autoharp design -- it seems to be perfectly designed as a carpal-tunnel-syndrome generator. The left hand reaches around the thing, cranks 90 degrees at the wrist, and tries to push the buttons, hard. Worst possible thing you can do to your hand/wrist. And it hurts, too, even before you get any permanent damage. Not sure what to do about that -- possibly better positioning across the chest, maybe hold the left elbow out from the body? With a small pillow? (At the risk of making people think you have some soft of bagpipe-autoharp hybrid...)

Final layout