The Dusty Blog

If you can make it to Parsippany, NJ at the end of July, we highly recommend checking out the 2014 Somerset Folk Harp Festival. (It's named that because it used to be held in Somerset.) It is a four-day conference, running from Thursday, July 31st through Sunday, August 3rd, and we’re pretty sure it's currently the largest gathering of folk harp presenters, performers and exhibitors on the east coast (and possibly even in the whole U.S.).

People often ask us what kind of music can be played on a hammered dulcimer, and the short answer is that you can play pretty much anything. The longer answer is that it does depend a lot on the range and chromatic capability of your particular instrument. So what better way to give you a taste of the grand possibilities than to show you a few videos of people playing our largest chromatic hammered dulcimer in a variety of styles!

The AHS conference is a giant celebration of harps, harpists and harp music, and it’s an infectiously fun atmosphere to be in the middle of. This is its 41st year and it’s being held in New Orleans with lots of jazzy Southern flair.

This is the final post in our harp amplification series, which covers the details of connecting everything together. If you can make it through all of them, you should have a pretty complete (if basic) picture of what you’ll need to get the sound from your harp out to the ears in the back row.

This is the third post in our harp amplification for beginners series. (We tried to make it the last one but it just got too long, so we split it up.) The first post talked about the differences between microphones and pickups, and the second post explained the details of the Dusty Harp Pickup. This one and the next one will get you familiar with the equipment that actually amplifies the sound that is captured by your microphone or pickup, as well as the stuff that connects it all together.

How do you give someone a pickup recommendation for their harp when you’ve tried just about every pickup out there and none of them have been all that satisfying? For us, the answer was to go to work developing our own. We thought there must be a way to get a more focused, even and natural sound from a harp pickup, and after much engineering and experimentation, we felt like we achieved it.

People ask us frequently about the best way to amplify their harp, and there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Everyone’s situation is different (needing a bit of a boost for outdoor weddings vs. competing for volume in a rock band), and the best solution depends on a number of factors. We’re not experts on live sound, but we do know a lot about harps in particular and we’ve found that for many harpists, the world of amplification is a new and daunting place full of unfamiliar terms. So we’re doing a short series of posts for harpists new to this world that will hopefully get you oriented and help you figure out in what direction to begin looking.

Meet the Boulevard Classic 34!

Is a pesky buzz keeping you from enjoying the beautiful sound of your harp? If so, do not despair, for we have created an interactive troubleshooting guide just for you!

Dusty Strings is celebrating its official 35th birthday this year. In honor of this milestone, here is a story about the true beginnings of the company and the building of hammered dulcimer #1.