Originally Posted by philjs (Post 6185355)

Hi all,



A couple of months ago I finally "took the plunge" and bought a harp guitar, a Timberline T30HGc. Some of you may recall my posts about needing sharping levers on a harp guitar because a) I'm a full-time DADGAD player, and b) I play with various partial capos much of the time.



The base tuning for the sub-basses, E(or F)GABCD wasn't going to work for me and I'd need to drop everything a full-step to DE(or F)GABC which would mean working with a 0.085 low string. Can you say "bridge cable?" Another DADGAD player, Frank Doucette, suggested a "modified" Bennett tuning of GABCEG and after a month of trying to get a handle on this new instrument, I began to think that this would work for me.



But my use of a modal tuning, and partial capos(!), means that by simply placing a capo I can change keys/modes on the fly. I really dreaded the thought of having to re-tune the sub-basses to get the Bb and F natural I'd need for Dm, as just one example. So, I took another "bull by the horns" and ordered and installed six sharping levers on the sub-bass head. It was surprisingly easy to do...a bit anxiety-inducing (!) taking a drill to the head of a reasonably expensive instrument...but still a pretty easy thing to do.



Now my base sub-bass tuning, levers down or not engaged, is GABbCEF#. With all of the levers up, that is engaged, I now have access to G#, Bb, B natural, C#, F natural and a high G natural. A lot of possibilities there! By putting the 1st and 4th string levers up I have the base GABCEG modified Bennett tuning but I now have access to so much more!



When I told Gregg Miner at harpguitars.net (and Rob Smith at Timberline) that I had added the levers, Gregg asked me to write a "guest blogg" about the experience for his "Gregg's Blogg" on the harpguitars.net site. So I took some pictures, wrote far-too-long a diatribe, and Gregg has put it up online.



Read it...at your peril...at Gregg's Blogg...



Phil