Thank you. I purchased the Reverie Harp Kit and have just finished it a few days ago. It is hard to put down, as the sound is so soothing. It is also nice to have my young children be able to play it and make beautiful sounds without knowing anything about scales yet.

As for building tips -- my router is still packed away from a recent move, so I used a hand-held mini planer for trimming the front and back. Much faster than sanding and worked perfectly.

Will be back for more in the future!

Thanks again,
Lisa

The Reverie Harp Kit went together with success, even for someone without a lot of woodworking skills or background. We are finding it very beautiful to look at and soothing to play. It will be used in a hospice situation and we're really looking forward to sharing it with the patients and staff. The Director suggested that it's first assignment could be in an empty patient room that seems to have a tendency to collect "bad vibes". Maybe we can change the feelings that seem to linger in the room to encourage more positive thoughts :-) Thanks so much for a great product and a wonderful opportunity to share something good with others during one of life's most difficult times.

Rob and Nancy

Hey Matt!!!

I finished my harp kit!!!! It turned out so well!!! THANK YOU FOR ALL THE HELP --- I really couldn't have done it without the excellent instructions and the EXCELLENT VIDEOS!!! The extent of my woodworking experience had been refinishing some furniture years ago and as far as my musical ability, I've never played or tuned an instrument in my life, but with your instructions, videos and patient, supportive emails I WAS SUCCESSFUL!!! It really is a beautiful, beautiful instrument -- to look at, to play and to listen to!

The kit was challenging, but not overwhelming, especially when I could contact you with any questions. The sanding and watching the grain of the beautiful wood start to show and seeing the harp take shape was really a rewarding part of it. I only had a Black & Decker palm sander and no router so it took a while to get the curve of the edges just the way I wanted, but I took my time and I was quite pleased with the result. I loved the feel of the smooth cherry and mahogany and loved the smell of sawdust (which was pink!). I had my brother-in-law use his drill press to drill the holes. I thought the harp was pretty when I was all done sanding, but when that first coat of finish went on, it was just gorgeous, it really was a thrill to see how pretty an instrument it was.

During the stringing of the harp, I literally had your video playing over and over and over as I was installing the strings. The first one was tough and took me a while, but each one got a little easier to do and I was a little less clumsy at it, and by the last one I was far from an expert at it, but it went pretty well. The tuning baffled me at first and I had to walk away from it for a day. I listened to your video over and over, I listened to the online tuner and it just wasn't clicking with me and my harp was just sounding reeeeeeally bad. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, I would get the electronic tuner to play the right note on the template under the string, but I must have been skipping around octaves or something, but it was bad. When I tried again, I put it together in my mind (and it maybe would be obvious to somebody who reads music or is experienced playing an instrument or is just plain smarter than me) that the D5 on string 2 should sound exactly like the D5 on string 21, the C5 on 3 and C5 on 20 should sound the same, etc, and then it all came together and it was beautiful!

My family and especially my Mom seemed pretty impressed that I built the harp. I gave it to the hospice in Litchfield in memory of my Dad and sister and hopefully it'll bring many hours of enjoyment and comfort to those that use it. I'm attaching an article the local paper wrote up on the gift.

Thank you for the help Matt, everyone at Musicmakers was just so nice, it really was a fun, rewarding experience.

Jayne Piepenburg

Read the article about Jayne in the Litchfield Independent Review