Never had one or had the opportunity to play one, but have greatly enjoyed hearing one. Have many recordings featuring the autoharp. From Mother Maybell to Joan and Judy and others.

Haha, I have one identical or nearly so to yours, Alisande. It's got the same Autoharp logo so I'll assume it's the same brand if not the same model. I bought mine about 10 years ago.

It's annoying to tune. I can tune a guitar in 2 minutes or less, this thing takes a good 25 minutes.

Edit for PS - there are websites with chromatic tuners, others will give specific note tones, and some do both. Or, you can get an electronic tuner, they're not too expensive and that will help with the octaves worth of notes you need to deal with with these. My own approach is a combination of sensing tuners, tone generators, and my ear. It needs to be well tuned because like a piano, one or two off strings will be heard above all others.

Oscar Schmidt, right, Snidely? Yes, I remember the long tuning process. With a guitar, I usually did most of it by ear once I got the E (from the piano or another musician). Not so with the autoharp.

Do you play much?

Just before you posted I ordered a chromatic tuner. Looks just like the one I used to have. No idea what happened to that one.

Susan, you must post a you tube video of your playing and/or singing when you get the autoharp working .

Yes, Schmidt.

I play it occasionally. As with your story, I bought it mostly for my wife. She loves to play it but wouldn't consider giving any thought to tuning it. The unsubtle message I'll hear is "Something's wrong with this, it sounds funny". OK, I get it, it needs to be tuned.

As for me, I'd rather play a guitar. I have a modest collection of 6, all of different types, which I play less well than I'd like but I keep at it pretty regularly. I currently have two once a month guitar activities - one of which is for fun, the other of which I get a token amount of pay for. But it's pay nonetheless, it tickles my ego that I get modest compensation for doing something I love.

Oops, left off photo. Here's mine, I think it's the same

Sure looks the same, although probably newer.

Fran, Snidely already has his all set up to play--not to mention his guitars. So I think he should post the video. :-)

I also played one in elementary school, but not regularly. Just as part of music class. I thought it was neat.

Thanks for posting about the antique. That's a lovely looking instrument.

Re tuning, many years ago, for tuning my hammered dulcimer (i.e., half a piano with double runs of strings), I bought a little gizmo called "Tuner Helper" from The Thin Man. It's basically a transducer pickup on a short cord with an RCA plug to plug into your tuner. You just put the pickup against the soundboard and you don't have to worry about ambient noise. Makes it a lot easier, especially with the overtones.

If you don't know Bryan Bowers, give him a listen:

https://www.google.com/search?site=webhp&q=bryan+bowers+youtube&oq=bryan+bowers+you&gs_l=serp.1.0.0i67j0i22i30l3.3408.3439.0.7015.4.2.0.0.0.0.459.459.4-1.1.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..3.1.458.BDMhzlLKQdI

http://www.bryanbowers.com/music.html

Oh if only we cold hear a duet from Susan and Snidely!

If I would do it for anyone, it would be you, Alisande, but unfortunately the thing is out of tune and my video camera is out of film. Most of the guitars are kept in tune (there's one I don't play much), but I couldn't play and video at the same time.

lf you want some inspiration, here's Led Kaapana (better known for playing in the Hawaiian slack key style) having a go on an autoharp. Another practitioner was John Sebastian who featured his autoharp playing on many Lovin Spoonful songs.

On the video, be patient (or jump over) the chit-chat in the first 30 seconds, what follows is worth it.

I am inspired, Snidely!

I played years ago, my grandmother played and had a beautiful harp but I have no idea what happened to it. She taught me when I was a young child. Now we do own way too many guitars and banjos. I have my father's guitar and banjo, my husband has his father's banjo, and between the two of us have numerous more guitars. My favorite is my 12 string. But with my hands as they are now that's not something I will ever be doing again. He still plays very well.

You have my sympathy, Raven. Years ago I had to accept the fact that Raynaud's had forced me to stop playing the guitar. Mine is a 6-string, but I would have loved a 12 too. Great sound.

My late daughter received many band honors in high school for her clarinet playing. We gave her a guitar as a graduation gift, and after a summer of teaching herself to play she auditioned with the guitar at a university with a good music program. They offered her a $5,000 scholarship, and she became a jazz guitar major. A year later she auditioned with the clarinet, and this time they gave her a full scholarship as a performance clarinet major.

My son still plays the guitar, but his sound is more likely to come out of a Marshall amp. :-)

I like electric guitar too. I started playing clarinet in grade school band lol. I still have mine and I have a beautiful alto Sax. Wish I was better at the Sax. I had a good friend that plays professionally and he also taught Sax, he would work with me when we lived in Denver. Sure miss that. I love the sound of a good Sax player.

That was wonderful for your daughter she must be a natural at music.

Yeah, three of mine are electric and one of several amps is a Marshall tube amp.

I'm surprised to hear of some of you hanging on to instruments that aren't used and won't be used in the future. Why do that? If these were mine, I'd find a way to "recycle" them to give someone else the joy and pleasure of their sounds.

Grandchildren and great grandchildren, I gave my grandfather's violin to my oldest granddaughter when she expressed interest in music, she continued her education in violin and piano which led to scholarships for her University education. Our oldest grandson started with a little guitar we gave him as a child, my husband passed on one of his own and grandson really progressed with the guitar and I thought he would get into music also but he decided to enlist and spent several years in active duty, he and his wife both are actually. We have offered all the grandchildren our own instruments should they decide to pursue music. Now we have two great grandchildren we can pass forward to. They have greater meaning when it's handed down through the family generations.

Different people have different perspectives. My family seems to have more anti-clutter militancy than heirloom nostalgia. When the longer living of my two parents died, I asked my kids if they wanted to go through the accumulated things, and the response from all of them was about the same, like this - "I don't want or need anything, and you don't either, just get rid of it". So everything was donated or tossed, I was okay with that.

I try to follow a 12 month rule - anything not used in 12 months should be discarded and I do. As far as anything for our kids or their kids (only one is married and our two resulting grand kids are yet in diapers), all say consistently - "Don't keep anything that WAS mine, or anything of yours, that you think I'll want, because I don't and I won't."

For kids or grand kids, peer pressure pushes them to want what their friends have. If their friends have junky new XYZs, or rented instruments, whatever, then they'll want the same. Grandma's or Grandpa's old "whatever" is likely of sentimental value only to Grandma or Grandpa, not to anyone else.

I'm with you, Raven. Sounds like you have a musical family. Probably Snidely as well. Me too--going back several generations. Musical ability is often inherited.

For a long time now, when I want to make music I turn to the piano. We had two pianos for years--definitely overkill, I admit. My mother-in-law studied to be a concert pianist, and the piano I have now was her wedding gift from her father in 1922. It isn't going anywhere.

Sometimes I wish I had an anti-clutter tendency or two. Still, the things I saved from my parents house make me happy.

alisande, it's hard to describe the happiness one can get from taking unneeded "stuff" out of the house and depositing it at the dump, recycling center, or thrift store, as appropriate. It's liberating.

True happiness is reclaiming the use of a drawer, a closet, a shelf or an area of a room that was unusable because of being stuffed with unneeded things.

If you have a sentimental feeling about something that isn't otherwise needed and is taking up space, take a picture of it. It'll be yours forever that way!

If I did that, I'd just end up with new stuff. I like my stuff. While some people may feel joy from shedding stuff, I always end up later looking for something I got ruthless about and sent away before I was done with it. I find true happiness in other things than emptying closets.

I did, however, loan my two lesser guitars to people who had none to play and neither was ever returned. That makes me unhappy. I'd rather have them sitting around demanding to be tuned. I take solace in the thought that someone, somewhere might be playing them since people don't usually put playable instruments in the trash.

There's a bit of deliberate hyperbole in what I said, pillog, don't take the words too literally. Sounds like you have a stuff accumulation propensity as do so many others. It's common.

Sorry to hear about your guitars. Myself, I'd be more likely to loan someone my dog than a guitar, and I'd never under any circumstances loan anyone my dog (more hyperbole). If they were truly lesser and unneeded instruments, why had you kept them?

Not so much an accumulation propensity. I'm just not anti-stuff. I have things that I only want once in a decade, but when I want them I want them and if I don't have them I have to replace them.

One instrument was my first guitar, which my parents gave me. The other was one I got when I was living in Mexico, it was truly a poor instrument but had a sweet sound. I have a good guitar and I don't need the other ones, but I do miss them.

Snidely, I must say that's an unusual definition of true happiness. While there's a certain satisfaction in ridding oneself of unused (and, it is assumed, unwanted) items, and while I do conduct periodic purges of clothes and other expendables, I will always take pleasure in living among things that belonged to people I've loved and lost, and other things that remind me of happy times with them or with my family and friends still living.

In my barn is a box of stuff from my parents' house that I still haven't gone through. The other day my son was over there when he heard a music box begin to play. The song was "Close to You," the old Carpenters hit.

He tracked it down and found a heart-shaped music box belonging to my stepmother, who joined our family in the mid-1950s. Inside was this picture of her new family at the time: my dad with his mother and me. Will I ever get rid of the music box or the photo? Not a chance.

I agree with Snidely that it is liberating to get rid of 'stuff' - but the significance is that 'stuff' is ephemeral, can easily be replaced and doesn't have any sentimental value. If you enjoy a memento and receive pleasure from looking at it or it helps you recall a loved one or a special event or vacation then it isn't 'stuff' to you. It's a treasure.

Susan, have you shown the autoharp to the boys?

Looks like something my sister had when she started teaching kindergarten. She would play it and sing with her students. It was fun to hear and play. I don't know if she still has it.

Maire, I was thinking of the boys when I resurrected it. Joey loves music, and loves to sing. We often have "duets" (haha) at the piano, and I've bought him a children's recorder, piano horn, and electronic keyboard. It occurred to me the other day that the autoharp would be fun to engage him with. The pitch pipe has been shipped!

Well, re-bonding with the autoharp isn't going very well. I tuned all 36 strings, looking forward to playing my first chord, only to discover quite a few strings went out of tune immediately. I knew it wouldn't hold a tuning very long because each string was off by 4 or 5 notes, but I thought it would do better than that.

Even worse, I discovered what I'd forgotten: The felts aren't working properly. When you press some of the chord buttons, some of the felts hit some of the wrong strings--and some don't hit enough. I remembered (a little late) why the instrument hasn't been played in so long.

On any stringed instrument, when strings haven't been brought up to tuning tension in awhile, they can go flat (lose tension). Try tuning them again. Or, the strings may be dead if very old.

The felts not hitting all the strings is curious, have some pieces fallen off? Is it better if you press harder?

I replace guitar strings pretty regularly, they do lose their ring before too long. My autoharp is about 10 years old and still has its original strings. I'd have to become very serious about playing it, which is unlikely, before biting off the task of replacing the strings. Too much work for too little a payoff for me.

You can probably get the autoharp restrung and reconditioned for a reasonable price if it's a good instrument.

A regular modern autoharp (not an antique, not one with special features) may be one of those things that for some people are cheaper to replace than to repair.

New strings are about $75. If someone can't do it themself and needs a tech, that would probably be another $75 (in my area, or maybe more). Add some more time to look at the felt muters and do something with those (if the tech know autoharps), total these charges and then consider that a new entry-level autoharp goes for ~ $250.

I am music and instrument challenged, but we found an autoharp on Craig's list for me about a year ago. I think we paid a whole $50 for it. There was no tuning key, so DH used a pair of needle nosed pliers to tune it for the first time. Like Alisande's, it didn't hold a tune for long. DH ordered a tuning key from e-bay, and tuned it again. It has sat in the case untouched since then. When we went to Merlefest this spring, it rekindled our interest. When we got home, out it came and got tuned again. I am going to try to learn, at least enough to play along a little bit. DH plays guitar, tho not often. He also has a banjo that he tinkers with once in a while. If I can remember, I will take a photo of mine and post it tomorrow. To tired to bother tonight.

Thanks, everyone. I'll have to spend some time with the autoharp and figure out what I want to do. I'll try pressing harder on the buttons too.

I've never played in a group with the autoharp. On July 4 I sat on my daughter's dock with two friends who were playing a ukulele and mandolin, and daydreaming about what fun it would be to jam with them. Then I thought about getting 36 strings in perfect tune with them. End of dream. LOL