#55 - Drew's "TIP-OF-THE-DAY" ... Tuning WITH and WITHOUT FINE TUNERS, and ... "Reasons for using the LONG HANDLE TUNING WRENCH"

Fine tuners give an ability to gain accurate tuning with easy effort by using a small Allen wrench on the screws at the bottom. But for the many harps that don't have fine tuners (and my harp doesn't have them), as well as those that DO have fine tuners, this information may provide good food for thought (and action).

The little short, stubby tuning wrench originally provided with a newly purchased Autoharp or Chromaharp is quite, ill-fitting, sloppy, and extremely difficult to use successfully!

The beauty of the LONG HANDLE TUNING WRENCH is that with the extra leverage provided, and using minimum tuning pressure, you can achieve very accurate tuning with this wrench. Having no fine tuners on my own harps, I find this wrench practically indispensable! And there are more reasons to love it even if you do have fine tuners.

Here are the benefits this wrench can give for easy and accurate tuning of harps having no fine tuners:

FIRST, like the :T" wrench, this wrench has a "star point," which means there are 8 possible positions to insert the tuning business end onto a tuning pin. Therefore you can easily place the wrench at the most comfortable spot to begin your tuning. As the long handle is about 8 1/2" in length away from the pin about to be tuned, you can see that there will be a considerable amount of leverage that can very LIGHTLY be applied to the pin. And the wrench fits the pins snugly, without sloppy play. You'll find that almost every hammered dulcimer player uses this same wrench for these and the following reasons.

Only a gentle effort is required when applying lateral pressure at the end of the long handle. The extra leverage means you get a careful and precise tuning with minimum movement at the wrench end. I rest the side of my left hand on the harp and simply apply pressure with just my index finger and thumb. Watch your chromatic tuner, and move the string right into tune. It's always advisable to tune to pitch while in the tightening mode. If you go slightly past the mark, just push down on the string (watching the meter on your tuner) and lift off .. and you'll find you can get the string right into perfect tune! Don't forget, wiggle the string, following the wiggle up to the same pin you intend to tune. And then sound that same string when tuning. A sure way to prevent breaking a string! If you're badly out of tune when you start, double check tuning of all strings after your first complete tuning, because lots of adjusting of some of the strings can affect the tuning of others you may have just tuned.

SECOND, another advantage of the Long Handle Wrench is when changing strings, it's so easy to insert the wrench and laterally rotate the pins around and around to remove the string. It's so fast and easy! Don't forget that you must unwind the tuning pins sufficiently for the new strings to be inserted and then wound back to the same point where they were properly lined up before removing!

And THIRD, even if you DO have fine tuners, you should occasionally align the fine tuner cams at the bottom by first loosening all the strings from the top pins ... then adjust the cams at the bottom so they are all leveled and centered ... and then retighten strings at the top pins to get strings in perfect tune. The long handle wrench is truly ideal for this. Afterwards, adjustments can then be done using the fine tuners. This two-step process will create a level plane for the string bed on OS harps and those harps that do not have a bottom rod bridge (as some luthiers have on their harps), with dividends of more uniform chording pressure from your chord bars. The more accurately you tune the top pins, the less you'll need to make tuning adjustments with the fine tuners.

So there you have some methods and reasoning for tuning, which certainly work well for me! Fine tuners or not, a Long Handle Wrench can do a great job for you!

Drew Smith
c/o Great All-American Autoharp Emporium
529 Ardmore Road, Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ 07423 / 201 444-2833
drew-smith-autoharp-emporium [at] verizon.net

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