We get why people ask! Not everyone lives near a Dusty Strings dealer or has a friend with one of our instruments or can visit us in person at a harp conference or our showroom in Seattle. Buying an instrument sight-unseen is nerve-wracking. We have said yes once or twice to the phone request, but we've usually regretted it because the instrument invariably sounds worse over the phone than it does in person or in a studio-quality recording.
Almost 20 years ago, we embarked on an ambitious recording project that would allow customers from all over the world to get a sense of how each model sounds in relation to the others, and even how each wood type sounds in relation to the other choices. We hoped this would help them make decisions about what would best fit their needs and preferences.
We wanted all the harps to be demonstrated by the same person using the same tune, and to be recorded in the same environment so it would be a fair comparison. We used the same microphone setup for each harp, placed it in the same spot in the room, and chose not to edit the sound files. It's still not the same experience as hearing a harp in person, but we felt it came as close as possible to creating an accurate way to judge one harp against another.
The first round of recordings was done in one session in 2009 with our great friend Harper Tasche as the recording artist. He played over a dozen different harps, and you can probably imagine how much tuning happened that day! A few years later, we added a new wood species (cherry!), so we used our notes and photos from the first session to recreate the studio setup as closely as possible, and we asked Harper to play the same pieces on the new cherry harps.
Our newest model, the FH34S, was released as we were coming out of the COVID shutdown and that presented some unique challenges when we thought about how to add it to the recording lineup. We needed to build and reserve five different harps in the different wood choices, but the impact of the pandemic on manufacturing meant that we had built up a waiting list for harps that was more than a year long. It didn't feel right to delay customers' harp orders in order to serve this project, so we relied on words to try and describe how this new model sounded in relation to the others.
It's taken us a while to rebuild our stock, but we finally got to the point where we had capacity to reserve one FH34S of each "flavor" and we knew it was time to give the people what they'd been asking for. We used the same recording room, the same equipment, and the same setup to record these new clips. The only difference was in the player.
Harper Tasche passed away in 2023, and our harp community lost one of its brightest lights. As we grieved our friend and colleague, it was difficult to imagine someone else taking over the role of Dusty harp demo artist.
Ray had crossed paths with Margot Krimmel a number of times over the years through the harp and hammered dulcimer communities, and when he heard her album Ever The New Time Comes, which was recorded largely on her Serrana 34, he immediately felt that she was the right person for this role. By the time we were ready to set up the recording session, Margot had already bought an FH34S of her own and was loving it, so we were delighted when she enthusiastically agreed to be a part of this project.
The player is a major variable in how a harp sounds, and there's no way we'll ever be able to create an apples-to-apples comparison with Harper's recordings. Nonetheless, Margot did an absolutely fantastic job and we're really happy with how these recordings turned out. (Scroll down to hear for yourself!)
We've been asked whether the arrangements of these pieces are available, and you can contact Margot through her website to find out more: https://www.boulderharp.com/
