In a previous post I reported on an introduction to the new Sipario BioCarbon harp strings that we received during a recent technicians conference at Lyon & Healy in Chicago.

Just after the conference Liza and I got an opportunity to partially restring a Salvi Hermes, which is entirely strung in BioCarbon lever strings (except for the wires). We replaced the entire 5th and 4th octaves, as well as several of the third octave strings. At the conference, we were warned that BioCarbon strings cannot be pulled up to their target pitch right away, as gut or nylon strings can. According to the engineers at Salvi and Lyon & Healy, increasing the tension too quickly can result in string breakage. Mindful of this, we followed a fairly conservative schedule of tuning to get this harp to pitch. Here is what we noticed.

These strings have no “muscle memory.” This facet is of more interest to technicians than harpists, because we sometimes have to remove a string from a tuning pin and reinstall it shortly after. While traditional strings, once stretched, tend to remain stretched, BioCarbon strings, if allowed to go slack, shrink immediately back to their original length. This means if you take the string out of the tuning pin, a short time later it will be too short to be reinstalled. In the case of the harp we worked on, we had to remove all the strings from the tuning pins in order to partially disassemble the harp for a repair. After the repair was complete, the majority of its strings had become so short they could not be reused.

These strings stretch A LOT. We aimed for an initial goal of tuning the harp about three whole steps below concert pitch the first day, then a step up the next day, and another step the next, and so on. We found that BioCarbon stretches significantly more than nylon (which itself stretches more than gut). While attempting to tune even several steps low, we would often hear the string falling in pitch even as we were tightening it on the pin.

We tuned twice daily for about four days before shooting for concert pitch. We found the strings could get to concert pitch, but wouldn’t stay there for even a moment. At this point we began trying the lateral stretching technique demonstrated by Salvi personnel in this video. We went through this technique on all the new strings about three times. This helped, but the strings continued to drop in pitch very quickly. At our conference, the Salvi engineers implied that a string could be brought to stable pitch in minutes with their stretching technique. While this may be true for one string (though I doubt it), it doesn’t instantly make a couple of octaves worth of new strings stable. This is understandable, since a harp with lots of new strings is itself rather unstable.

After 3 more days of frequent tuning and another stretch treatment, the strings were holding well enough for us to regulate the harp. This means they could hold their pitch for at least ten seconds or so while we checked lever positions. It doesn’t necessarily mean it would remain in tune long enough at this point to perform or even practice on. 

We were fairly conservative with how quickly we tuned this harp, because we didn’t have an ample supply of backup strings in case of breakage, and were on a deadline to get the harp strung and regulated. It’s possible one could go faster. In the future we hope to test this on one of our own harps.

I’ve had comments on my blog post and in response to our last newsletter reporting faster results than we had. One commenter said tuning a new string twice a day results in a string that will hold pitch well enough to play in 5-7 days. In light of this, it is likely things went more slowly for us because of the large number of strings we were replacing at once. If you just replace one broken or worn string, hopefully the process will be much quicker and easier than what we’re reporting here.

Takeaways

BioCarbon strings are the closest string yet developed to gut strings in sound, feel, and projection. A group of harpists and harp technicians was pleasantly surprised by how closely they approximate gut. This is not to say they sound the same. I would describe the sound in general as a bit sharper and brighter than gut. The company promises that the search for better gut alternatives will be ongoing. The sound of BioCarbon is close enough to gut that many harpists will be perfectly satisfied with it, especially if the company’s claim that they remain more stable once fully stretched proves true. At Moss Harp Service, we have not yet had the opportunity to judge that claim, but we did notice that these strings are much trickier to work with in the beginning. 

The company assures us these strings are safe to use on all harps (assuming they are built for traditional or lever gut stringing), and we are satisfied they’ve tested this claim. They stress that switching from one material to the other requires regulation of the harp, so switching is not a simple matter of buying and installing another string.

Should you try them? If you have a second or third harp you don’t rely on day to day, and can wait to get in tune, I suggest you try them. The harp community could use more data on how these strings work for harpists. If they are eventually more stable, they may be a great choice for your “gig harp” or the one you use for outdoor weddings. Let’s give them a try and see if they bring new advantages to the harp world, or if they’re yet another near miss in the quest for a synthetic gut string.