Extra drowsy Formula

Buying stuff on eBay is dodgy. Here’s a phonoharp I bought recently.

It’s a precursor to the autoharp. The metal grill across the middle has holes in it, in three horizontal rows; when you scrape a pick along a row, it hits only the strings exposed by the holes, thus sounding a chord. There are only three chords possible, but C, G, and F are pretty much the only chords I use anyway.

This particular one has a patent date of 1891 stamped on it; I am not sure how old this particular one is. It has a solid body — rather than a hollow one with a soundhole — which I’m guessing dates it fairly early.

The problem with this one is that the dead pin end is starting to pull up due to the tension of the strings.

Here is a side view of (what in the photo above is) the lower left-hand corner:

You can see a pin sticking out at the far right; this is what the strings hook onto.  (There’s a whole row of them, one per string.) As the string is tightened (using the standard zither pins at the top end), the loose wood will pull upward. This means that it’s not possible to keep the thing in tune, since the pulling will cause the strings to loosen; tightening them will only cause the wood to pull up further until it comes loose entirely and smacks you in the face.

Now, if this was something I could look at before buying, it’d be one of the first things I’d check. It’s way too much hassle to deal with that sort of bodywork. This one might be easier, being a solidbody. Can I just shove some woodglue in there and clamp it down for a few days? Should I run a screw into it?

I think what I will do is run it by an instrument repair shop and see what they think. Worst comes to worst, it cost me less than $20 (including shipping) and I can live without it, but it’d be nice to get it up and running.

Further reports as events warrant.

When I was in college, I was in a band called WeeHuggum, from 1988 to 1992. One of the other people in the band was named Michael Griffen; I met him because he’s the father of a friend from high school. Michael passed away this week.

Michael was more than WeeHuggum’s fiddle player; he also hosted the band at his house for many months before he was even a member of the band. Before WeeHuggum existed, he also hosted my previous band, Bingo Riot (which also included his daughter Aral), who never got as far as playing a gig but recorded a 4-track tape recorded by Michael’s son Adam. I learned to play drums while in Bingo Riot, a process which was almost certainly not totally delightful to Michael, but he always offered nothing but support, while never trying to tell me “how to do it right.”

He was a huge influence on my musical development, and although I often feel that I’ve squandered most of what I gained, there’s a core there that still resonates. Without Michael, there’s an excellent chance that I never would have played any music at all.

Michael never really wrote songs for the band — like all of us, he wrote his own parts, but very seldom did he bring something in. This song is, in fact, the only one I can think of of that germinated with Michael. It’s still one of my favorite WeeHuggum songs. Michael’s playing fiddle and I am drumming and singing; Beau Fredericks is playing bass and Eric Ostrowski is playing guitar. Recorded by Conrad Uno in Seattle, and transferred inexpertly to the digital realm by me.

Bridge Song

Thanks, Michael.