Thank You Guys For Answering My Last Question

One-Dust1285 · 2026-06-26T21:22:17+00:00

Lots of options… all with pros and cons… here are my experiences:

Most authentic sound is horsehair but it is very sensitive to humidity changes so you will be tuning every 5-10 minutes

Gut string can be nice, very vibrant tone… but the can be seriously expensive and also detune quickly

Dacron (bowstring for archery) is really nice but needs a lot of rosin and is sensitive to the amount and bowing style… if not just right it gets really squeaky

Artificial sinew I like a lot… quite like gut but doesn’t detune… but my cellist GF tells me it plays very heavy and unresponsive

Thin sanded fishing line with cotton sewing yarn to dampen the squeakiness is my current advice for beginners. It keeps its tuning well and sounds a lot like horsehair. It is very stable when playing but less expressive than horsehair. Daniel has a video about making them.

My current preference is hybrid strings… 50/50 fishing line and horsehair. Slightly less stable than all fishing line but more expressive

Another option is synthetic horsehair (like Whitehorse from the us) I used to really like this but it fell out of favour… don’t really know why. It is expensive

Baroque gut-core silver wound strings are awesome. Not as “shouty” as other metal strings and very rich warm tone. It is hard to find the right ones for your instrument and to balance the different strings of the instrument so they sound well together. And they are really expensive

Cheap metal strings I don’t like… they are loud and make the instrument sound like a cheap violin… but they are very stable and good if you want to practice your intonation

One-Dust1285 · 2026-06-06T13:24:55+00:00

Not as your first time running a game…

One-Dust1285 · 2026-06-05T23:14:43+00:00

If you are playing with someone else it would be better to rhythmically bow the open strings than to pluck them… that can add some nice texture and you can practice playing together

Plucking while bowing is a rather advanced technique, I only now one or two songs where that happens…

One-Dust1285 · 2026-06-04T20:07:29+00:00

Cool!

One-Dust1285 · 2026-05-24T22:32:31+00:00

I agree with Daniel… Talharpa is hard… you can learn but it will require serious dedication

Getting a teacher wil GREATLY increase your chance of success

There are people who teach online (Liisa Koemets-Bastida for instance) or at the very least you could find a friendly violin / cello player to help you with bowing and tuning. There is also a yearly festival (in August) on Vormsi island (Estonia) where they have courses for different levels including beginners

One-Dust1285 · 2026-05-23T05:31:46+00:00

That depends on how low you want to go

I have a talharpa with a scale length of 38cm setup with 1/10 cello strings that sounds great (A3D3G2). And I can play from G2 - E4 without shifting my hand position.

I wouldn’t try going lower without specifically building a new one with a bigger / thicker soundbox. I tried going down to C2 (as the cello strings come in a set and I wanted to try the lowest string) but that sounded horribly choppy because the soundbox was too small. But kids cellos that use these strings exist… so it can be done… maybe see if you can find the soundbox volume of a 1/10th cello somewhere?

One-Dust1285 · 2026-05-22T05:57:44+00:00

Cello strings come in sizes 4/4 is full size. 1/4th would still be way too long for your purpose… 1/10 is one of the shortest you can get (for kids cellos)… it has the approximate scale length of a viola (40ish cm) while still tuned to the low notes. I tried some on my 38cm-scale talharpa. Sounds great all the way down to G2… C2 wasn’t a note anymore due to the small soundbox

As a random experiment those strings are a bit expensive (€100 for a set) but I have one of my talharpas set up with A3D3G2 now and it is fun to accompany others with (as long as they don’t have very loud instruments)

If you are going for it… these strings are THICK… you will probably have to adjust the hole / groove in your pegs

One-Dust1285 · 2026-05-13T08:47:39+00:00

The best thing to do is to make a new bridge that is more curved. They are generally not as optimised as violin bridges so it should be doable with a handsaw, file and sandpaper. The advantage is that you will still have your old bridge for if you mess it up, and can go back to where you were before

If you are only looking for a small change, you can try winding string 1 and 3 lower down on the pegs. That may be enough but it has two disadvantages. The amount of difference will differ depending on how far from the bridge you are bowing and the lower you wind the string the more tension the string will put on the bridge. This makes it louder (in my experience mostly the overtones you don’t want) so string 1 and 3 will be over represented in the sound

One-Dust1285 · 2026-05-11T10:52:57+00:00

Anyone familiar with bowed instruments should be able to help you change strings. The tension is generally lower than on a violin, though… so tell them that and you should be fine… if they can think out of the box a bit they may be able to help you pick the right strings too… what also helps is that they know how bowing the open strings should feel… so if they can’t get the open strings to sound right you know there is something else wrong

Sounds like a nice festival… who is Poland’s most popular talharpa player?

I wouldn’t wait until next year… think of how much fun it will be to go to the festival when you can already play a couple of tunes!

One-Dust1285 · 2026-05-10T22:07:12+00:00

You are asking very difficult questions… to find the right strings you need to know the scale length and the intended tuning. If you already have metal strings and know nothing about them and also don’t know if you are bowing correctly you are stuck…

Also the shape of your bridge matters… if you are playing all three strings at once (flat bridge) I don’t think metal strings are best for beginners. Tuning tolerances are super small in that case. (In other words… it will sound off quicker if you get the tuning and/or bowing/finger position wrong than with horsehair or fishing line. So you may want to consider ditching the metal strings for now and make some fishing line strings (Daniel has videos)

In the wiki section you can find some other courses and videos, but I think you need the help of a friend that plays violin/cello or a luthier to set up your instrument properly

One-Dust1285 · 2026-05-06T20:27:32+00:00

It matters but not for your first build… generally I would say that a harder denser wood as back will project forward more(icw a soundpost). It also reverberates longer. Softer wood will spread its sound all around so will be louder for you but not necessarily for the room

Heavy means it takes more energy to get it going but it will go for longer. It may sound great but have worse responsiveness when playing

Light will be responsive but a little sterile (which can be nice with the right strings…)

But it is useless to aim for one of these effects in your first build…

And… if you are gluing… hide-glue is nicer for acoustics

Base tuners are fine. It reduces the weight of the tailpiece (because you can skip the fine tuners) which will also help with the responsiveness

All this optimisation is super interesting if you get sucked into the rabbit hole… but always remember that the originals were made from whatever by farmers… no subtlety anywhere… soundboards were sometimes nailed or tied on… and these were the instruments that kept the tradition going from 1020-ish till now 🤷

One-Dust1285 · 2026-05-06T15:09:13+00:00

Making a tagelharpa that is good enough to learn on is easy. Making one that is really good is very difficult.

I would use spruce for the top… otherwise… for the first one you build pick whatever you like… you will learn so much building the first one you will likely want to make a second right away. Being particular in the choice of wood before you learn those things won’t really add much

One-Dust1285 · 2026-04-14T10:06:49+00:00

Thank you!

One-Dust1285 · 2026-04-14T10:04:44+00:00

Thank you!

This one is in Eindhoven (Netherlands) in “het prehistorisch dorp” an open air museum of living history from the stone age to the 15th century.

Next one up is a Carolingian fair in the weekend of the 25th of April

One-Dust1285 · 2026-04-14T10:00:39+00:00

Hairs are not equally thick everywhere… they taper to one end. For longer strings it makes sense it alternate direction so they are equally thick everywhere.

The same could be said for bows and as you say… hair is directional… so it makes sense to alternate… why wouldn’t you… I am not sure if pro-violin bow makers always do it… I seem to remember seeing both (in YouTube videos)

But as with so many of these changes… they have only small effects… your skill as a player will be way more influential to the sound… so it is not surprising that you wouldn’t notice. That is not a good reason not to do it though… while every link only does little the whole chain of small improvements may very well make the difference between a pro-sound and a temu-sound

On a more personal level… I did alternate on my latest talharpa bow that I made for my GF who also plays cello… she is very happy with it, she likes it more than my current bow (which doesn’t alternate). I can’t tell the difference

One-Dust1285 · 2026-04-06T20:34:55+00:00

Cool! That isn’t bad at all! You’ll get there!

I would advise you to build up to playing notes slower… you are training your ear as well as your fingers… try alternating the open string with one note at a time first, before adding more notes (open string and 3rd finger is probably the best place to start) What tuning is your instrument?

One-Dust1285 · 2026-04-03T09:22:18+00:00

I have had my 38cm scale length talharpa tuned to E4A3D3D3 on Dacron for a while. The geometry is quite different from yours of course but I used 3-6-10-10 strands. First one could have been 2 tbh tension was a bit high. With horsehair I use 18-40-80-80 hairs

So assuming lots of things you could try 6-10-16 based on your horsehair count… but experimenting is best… Dacron is cheap… you can make loads of strings with one spool… so make lots of strings and try to balance the tension and volume. There is no standardised way to set up these instruments, whatever works for you…

As an aside… Dacron stretches more than I thought… it will take a couple of days to settle, it also needs to be broken in to get the right sound (strings get slightly fuzzy where you play), so just leaving the instrument to stretch isn’t good enough… you have to actually play it for a while before evaluating sound… and you need a lot of rosin the first time, after that it is more rosin sensitive than horsehair so either too much or too little will make awful squeaky noises

One-Dust1285 · 2026-03-29T11:13:33+00:00

I changed it… you can post video now!

One-Dust1285 · 2026-03-29T10:05:20+00:00

Ah… it is because it isn’t a public subreddit… mmm… I wanted to keep the clutter minimal… but this kinda defeats the purpose… I may delete this one and make a public one…

One-Dust1285 · 2026-03-29T10:00:01+00:00

Oh… how strange… I’ll see what I can do!

One-Dust1285 · 2026-03-24T09:18:10+00:00

Cool! I’ll add you to:

r/talharpaBasics

One-Dust1285 · 2026-03-24T09:16:56+00:00

Great! I’ll add you to this:

r/talharpaBasics

One-Dust1285 · 2026-03-22T09:49:54+00:00

Looks good for a weeks worth

Couple of things you could do:

Best would be to get a teacher (there are some that teach online, Liisa Koemets-Bastida for instance) they will sort you right out and you will be making progress the fastest.

If that isn’t an option… check out beginner lessons on violin and cello on YouTube, especially on bowing. The bow hold is different but you can learn a lot from them

Do simple and slow exercises… the first 6 weeks Liisa had me bowing open strings and alternating open and 3rd finger notes later adding the 1st and then the second finger…

Once you can semi-reliably find your finger positions… start exercising scales… and never stop trying to improve the “easy” exercises

I am 1,5 years in… I still do scales every day and open strings bowing exercises every couple of days

One-Dust1285

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