Have you ever felt like your harp just doesn’t resonate as well as it used to? Replacing your bass wires might be the solution!
Bass wires are the metal strings in the lowest octave on your harp. Each bass string consists a plain steel core running straight up the middle and a much thinner winding coils around the core, and this is the part of the wire that you can see. Between the core and the winding is a layer of silk thread which keeps the core and winding from vibrating against one another.
Wire strings rarely break but this doesn’t mean they should still be on your harp for years and years! I have heard harpists brag that in X years they have only had to change X strings. While none of us enjoy strings breaking, keeping old strings on a harp for years is not necessarily a good thing. Harp strings eventually lose their bright sound. Over time, dust and grime work their way in between the coils of the winding, muffling the wire’s sound and dampening its sustain. Old bass wires have a sound that dies quickly, while new ones ring out and hold their tone longer. As wires age, their ability to vibrate sympathetically decreases and tarnish on the coil’s surface will cause it to lose its resonance. This happens slowly so that you may not notice the strings losing their quality, but you may wonder why your harp just doesn’t sound as good as it used to (Harp Herald).
Signs that your wire string has come to the end of its useful life include tarnishing and fraying - these will affect the sound of the string, causing it to be duller.
To keep a harp sounding at its best, particularly if you play a lot, it is good to change your bass wire strings every two years or so (from Norris Harps). if you play less you can probably wait longer, perhaps as many as five years. If you haven’t replaced your bass wires in a long time, try it, and hear the instant improvement in your harp’s tone. When one of my lever harp students puts on new strings, they are always shocked with how much brighter the harp sounds. While they may not have had a problem with the sound before, they had no idea that they were not letting the harp be at its full potential.
