About HavocHarpa – HavocHarpa

How HavocHarpa came to be

In 2018 I heard my first Talharpa, like many people it was through Wardruna. I immediately fell in love with the sound and spent some time researching the instrument. Though I had not played an instrument in over 15 years, I was inspired to pick this one up.

I spent a number of years frequently considering purchasing one but there were so many all over Etsy and I had no idea what I was looking for; either quality or sound wise.

Being a person who makes things for a living (knives, specifically; HavocWorks.com) and owning most of the tools I would need already, I decided I would just make one and see how it went!

In 2022 I sat down and created a CAD model of a talharpa, modified from various plans I had found on the internet. Then in July I made my first one:

I am not a traditionalist at heart. I used Viola strings, I used scrap carbon fiber for the bridge and tailpiece, along with bass tuners instead of pegs. Primarily I wanted something that sounded good and that I could just pick up and play whenever I had time, be it 5 minutes or an hour. I got pretty lucky and had a good sounding instrument right off the batt.

I spent a lot of time experimenting with different bridges, 100’s of dollars of different strings, bow hair, you name it. I also spent an immense amount of time playing; not really practicing in a structured way but just improvising and experimenting. I work from home, if the CNC machine was running, I was playing. If I needed a break from assembling knives, I was playing. I REALLY love these instruments.

I received a lot of positive feedback on my playing and made progress very quickly. As long as I was a little better than the day before I was happy.

Over the last couple of years I have had a number of people ask if I would make instruments to sell and while I very much enjoy making them, I couldn’t justify turning it in to a business; my primary business has a large backlog of orders to fill more often than not…and frankly is more profitable!

I really enjoy designing and experimenting with these. Unfortunately I can’t end up with a house full of instruments and neither can I afford to just build them constantly. So HavocHarpa will be my attempt to sell some of them, to fund making more of them.

My instruments are NOT traditional, while I love the sound of horsehair instruments I have not yet mastered making horsehair strings that sound the way I would like them to. If you are looking for that specific sound or an instrument that is entirely made by hand please check out some other makers whose instruments I like that sound of:

I am sure I’ll add more as I discover them

PLEASE NOTE: I can not help you learn to play as I am a very poor teacher and can rarely articulate what I’m doing! Check out Aftenstorm in the links above, he offers video lessons or check youtube!