Zimmermann Concert Grand Autoharp restore

[will thompson]

Hi all- my names Will, new to the forum, but a long time visitor to the main website.

I just won a Zimmermann Concert Grand autoharp on ebay, as a project piece- heres the article on frets.com for those who don't know it.

 

http://www.frets.com/fretspages/museum/Autoharp/ConcertGrand/concer...

and here are a couple of shots of mine

 

[IMG]http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c270/adapteradapter/GEDC5000.jpg[/IMG]

 

[IMG]http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c270/adapteradapter/GEDC5050.jpg[/IMG]

 

Basically after a hundred+ years strung up to full tension, it's pulled apart. Aside from that, the top has sunk a bit in the middle, and one of the bars has been broken at some point, and replaced with a standard one, minus the mechanism (but still with the buttons and slotted end), and with the felts placed nowhere near the correct place.

 

I'm just feeling my way around this at, but I'm thinking that the main area of damage (pictured above) could be clamped and slowly brought back to it's original position over some time, then glued. (I've had a 'test' clamp, and it sort of feels that if I took it all the way in one session, things could start cracking). As it's around the block where the strings anchor, there is a good amount of surface area..

A more problematic bit is the top edge (not pictured) there is a hairline crack that runs along with the curve of the side, which doesn't have any solid wood behind it. I could easily clamp that back to the original position, and hide glue it, but I'm not convinced that the tiny amount of potential glueing area is going to be stable enough under all that tension. Any ideas?

 

 

[Frank Ford]

Congrats on your eBay purchase!   I'd been considering bidding on that one, as if we needed two of them in the shop.  I've seen pix of five of them now (I think) but yours is the only other one that looks just like ours.

 

Our Autoharp had the backreplaced by Mario Martello in the early 70s to correct serious damage to it.  You might consider doing the same thing - that would give good access to the inside for reinforcement, regluing, etc.  If one section has glue failure there might be others as well.

[will thompson]

Hi Frank- thanks for replying!

 

Yes, I'd been thinking that removing the back might be the best option for full access, although- as the back is intact on mine, maybe a removal of the top would be a better move- to flatten it etc?. Would removal be a case of binding removal, careful work with a sharpened putty knife as per your current Martin restoration?

 

I've got a couple of other queries if you have a mo'?

 

The mechanics on mine are kind of stiff. Should the buttons on each bar be the first thing to 'give', because at the moment the bar goes down onto the strings, then bends the strings out of the way as the rest of the mechanism kicks into action. Should it be a smoother 'all in one' action?

Also- it's a way off yet, but at some point would it be possible to let me know the correct positions of the felts for the last, missing bar on mine- or perhaps replicate one with the mechanism in the shop?

 

Finally- how are ours different to the other ones you've seen? I have to confess that without even thinking I'd thought mine was a different colour to yours...and it was until I removed the years of black caked on filth yesterday! ;)

 

I know a couple of these showed up on US ebay a couple of months back. I didn't see those, but this one turned up on UK ebay, with a not terribly good description and 'collect only' (from a relatively remote area)- so perhaps it's different to the one you were considering bidding on? I'm almost embarrassed to say how much I paid for it...it wasn't a lot of money at all, so I'm happy to put some time, effort and money into sorting it out. Honestly can't wait to start using it on recordings.

 

 

[will thompson]

With reference to the bars- I just found a snippet on a forum that states these have 10 working buttons and one bar with dummy buttons

 

Is this the case with yours? Could it be that mine is all original... (bar the evenly space, equally sized pieces of felt?)