To my ear, the Carbon Harp sounds brighter and has much more "sustain" on the strings than the wooden harp. Probably caused be a much stiffer frame.

(A friend and I built a couple of Carbon fibre reinforced electric Bass guitars back in the early 90'ies)  we used the parts from a few damaged instruments,, (pickups, e.t.c.)

They had a much "drier" sound with more sustain than any wooden bass.. I think that sound "fell out of fashion" in the 00'es 

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Nice job Brian, it looks great and I think it sounds vastly superior to the wooden one!
The big bonus with making instruments in carbon fiber is that the voice is so much more powerful and loud.
Our violins and guitar both had this positive effect.
 Fred

Thank you all for your kind words.

Chris,
I think the problem with the sound is that the start of each note overwhelms the recorder. The real thing sounds better than the recording.
I am planning to make another harp similar to this one but with a rounded back sound box. It feels like cheating to make 4 sides a top and bottom and glue them together. OK in wood but you can do better with composites. Now I have more of a feel for the materials I am sure I can give it a better finish as well.
This weighs 3.6Kg. 3.2Kg lighter than the wooden one. Not knowing how strong is strong enough, I have pretty certainly put too much Carbon fibre in places.

Brian.

Hats off to an awesome project!!! congrats, sounds great too, although im no expert.

cheers

the wooden one sounds more mellow, the CF one sounds a little "bright" but that may mellow once everything has settled.

Cool project though and ace result.... any more in the pipeline?

Sound files. I hope this works. I have never used soundcloud before.

Brian.



https://soundcloud.com/brian_sav/wooden-harp-wav

https://soundcloud.com/brian_sav/carbon-harp-wav

The tone is similar if not smoother and rounder. It also seems slightly louder.
It is hard to compare to my un-trained ear anyway.
I will do some recordings soon of the 2 harps. The strings are still stretching so it is going off tune quite quickly.
I have not thought about pin stripes. I have not thought of much except will it be strong enough and sound good.
There is about 700 lbs pull across all of the strings. I love the shape that the sound board has bowed into.
I am not sure if it is really and advantage but I used Twaron for the sound board. It seemed like a good idea to me.
Confirmation of a question I asked a long time ago. Yes. PT326 is strong enough to hold it.

Brian. 

Wow, that is stunning!  Have you considered getting it pinstriped?

Hey, 

Stunning Is the tone any different compared to the original?

Warren

Carbon Copies Ltd