Electric or MIDI retrofits on existing harps
Because a Kortier harp pickup is primarily sensitive to the string bearing on it, and not to the vibrations coming from adjacent strings, it is entirely successful to install the Kortier MIDI system on any acoustic harp. These pickups (piezo transducers) are also the ideal way to amplify any harp, for live performance or recording work. Your harp will need to be in my shop for several weeks, but nothing is done that will harm the acoustic properties of your instrument. The process consists of unstringing the harp and installing a pickup for each string. At this point, the harp can be restrung and brought back up to tension. For customers desiring to simply add electric harp capability to their instrument, most of the work is done at this point. A small output jack preamp is installed, with its 9 volt battery, and the wiring is completed.
For a MIDI harp, the controller circuit module is then installed somewhere on the harp and all wiring can then be routed to this as appropriate. The main circuit board is housed in this metal box (for EMI shielding) which is approximately 22 inches long and 3 inches wide, 1 inch thick. It is necessary to mount this box so that it can be accessed later, for adjusting the operation of the harp, and possible troubleshooting. In other words, it is not a good idea to try to hide it inside the body of the harp, but in most cases the wiring can be hidden. The MIDI harp requires 12 volts DC to operate, so you will always need to plug into the wall to play, other than acoustically.
The cost of converting your acoustic harp to an acoustic/electric harp is generally about $800, plus shipping. To install the MIDI system on a pedal harp is about $3,500, depending on the number of strings, and other circumstances. All shipping of the harp is at the customer's expense, so hand delivering the harp to Duluth is worth considering. Adding MIDI capability to a lever harp is a similar process, and costs approximately the same, since the levers must each be connected with a switch to monitor their positions. If you are interested in having this work done to your harp, please contact me to make arrangements.
The harp below is a Lyon & Healy Electric Pedal harp that I recently converted. Because the old L&H pickups were not compatible, I simply installed the Kortier pickups on top of them, and disabled that now redundant system. Since the harp already had output jacks, the only visible alteration to the harp is the controller module mounted on the face of the soundbox. In this instance, the owner uses a remote rack-mounted synthesizer instead of an internal unit, and feeds the audio output of the harp to a central mixer board.
