Yonberg Harps

Hi Bill, I took your link and checked Yonberg out. I ordered and now have one of their harps. Full credit to the French here. This is a superb innovative engineering design. Three bolts and the entire harp falls open for maintenance/cleaning - stainless steel plates made by Seydel technology are held by finger rotatable clamps - literally takes seconds to dismantle. Ergonomic and sweet sounding chords to my ears. Takes a little bit of 'acclimatisation' to get used to the slight extension to the comb on the low reed end but that is no criticism. The reed chambers are not the typical rectangular boxed channels, rather they are a curved design that lays claim to geater air pressure effect. 

By comparison I have a Harrison B-Radical harp from a company that sadly went out of production almost before full production. That harp also sought innovative solutions to harp engineering. It failed technically for me in that it still had 4 screws (incredibly small) just to remove the cover plates, then it had a further 5 reed plate screws, two of which were poorly located for finger access. I still liked it very, very much for sound projection and physical comfort. 

So, from my experience to date Yonberg have created something quite exceptional. The price is relativley high but then innovation is never cheap. 

Well worth purchasing at least one - I will get more. To play an instrument that is truly different from others even though the others try to modernise yet have stayed with what is essentially a dated design technology.

Yonberg might not appeal to a traditional preference for pear wood combs and 1800's cover plates, nor to the brand conscious, but outside of these, I think the French have made a great leap forward