Harp E Electro Acoustic Harp by Joris Beets |
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| DESIGN NAME: Harp E PRIMARY FUNCTION: Electro Acoustic Harp INSPIRATION: Triggered by a charity telling him about the absence of affordable, quality harps for the thousands of students they aim to provide with instruments of their choice, we went on a mission to democratize the harp. Between a violin, a flute and a harp, many children choose the harp: it’s intuitive, embracing and immediately sounds good. But today harps are dissuasively expensive, thus remain elitist and produced in small numbers - which maintains their price high. Harp-E breaks this cycle. UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION: It’s the world’s most affordable, professional grade electro-acoustic harp. The ancient and complicated instrument was completely redesigned from scratch into a simple, elegant, flat-pack, self-assembly instrument. Some call it the people's harp. A complete structural rethink makes it a paradigm shift: all fragile parts are sandwiched inside the sturdy frame; Harp E is portable, stackable, adjustable, while boasting superior strings and electronics - all at a fraction of the price and weight. OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION: Harp E arrives as a DIY kit with an assembly manual and can be put together with just a standard Allen key. It’s easy to customize with paint, hacks or mirroring the entire harp for the left handed, a world first. It can be played on its height adjustable stand or worn like a guitar, acoustically or amplified by simply plugging it into a small amp setup, a smartphone, or a professional PA system. This offers a world of interaction modes and sound possibilities, imagine a harp with guitar effects! PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION: The project started in 2019 when Dutch charity Het Leerorkest challenged us, who had just taken the harp world by storm with his Delta harp, to design an affordable, professional grade harp. Harp E was designed between London and Amsterdam. The first 10 prototypes were shown on Dutch National television with 300 more crowdfunded by the charity. Harp E was presented at the World Harp Congress in July 2022. Now also available D2C online, it is played by children and adults worldwide. |
PRODUCTION / REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY: The core of the design is a revolutionary lever system, reducing hundreds of metal parts down to just two, with the rest CNC-ed out of the same sheet of beech plywood as the frame, like a near-wasteless jigsaw. Sandwiching the strings inside two thin frame halves, held together by standard stainless steel fasteners, allows for less wood and higher string tension. This and the custom designed pickup and preamp system, immune to EMI and with perfect frequency response, result in a superior sound. SPECIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES: Harp E has 24 SilkGut strings 5C-2E, fully levered. Width 48cm x Depth 7cm x Height 87cm. The stand fully nests inside the frame, everything fits into the carrier bag of the same dimensions. Harp 3.6kg, stand 1.2kg. Adjustable to 3 heights: 87, 101 and 115cm. The single, self-shielding sensor avoids low hums and spans all strings. The smart preamp ensures high signal-to-noise ratio, zero latency and full compatibility with any effects, stage amps and studio equipment, powered by a 9V battery. TAGS: Music, instrument, harp, education, DIY, self-assembly, democratization, inclusive design, electro-acoustic, electric harp RESEARCH ABSTRACT: Throughout the project we observed, interviewed, surveyed, co-created and tested 9 rounds of prototypes with: teachers, students, parents, maintenance, harpists and would-be harpists, assembly volunteers, school managers. Varying from group to 1:1, lab-based to contextual ethnographic (e.g. in classrooms) or quantitative (surveys), to fully understand the complex and contradicting web of requirements, deep insights that allowed design decisions making the harp both functional and desirable to all. CHALLENGE: A hundreds of years old status quo of harp levers was they were either good and very expensive or cheaper but poor quality. Simply put, harpists and teachers wanted a minimum of 24 strings, fully levered and of the right quality, but target cost price made that impossible. That was tackled by integrating all individual levers into a single mechanism with an entirely different working principle (changing the string tension instead of length to change the pitch), a shot in the dark, but it worked! ADDED DATE: 2022-06-29 08:11:42 TEAM MEMBERS (1) : IMAGE CREDITS: Joris Beets, 2022. PATENTS/COPYRIGHTS: Patented. PCT/GB2022/000024. Joris Beets Design. 2022. United Kingdom, worldwide. Copyrights belong to Joris Beets, 2022. Trademark (2022) Joris Beets Design. |
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| Visit the following page to learn more: https://www.harp-e.com/ | |||||
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NAME: Joris Beets Design PROFILE: Joris Beets is a designer and inventor with a long track record of patents and impactful designs across many industries and markets. He has won a series of awards like 2 CES innovation awards in consumer electronics and healthcare and for instance a previous invention, the Delta Harp, took the professional harp market by storm, and won the Red Dot Product Design award in 2017, it has since been licenced to Salvi Harps in Italy, dubbed the “Steinway of harps” has been played at all major stages in the world including the 2018 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony. His latest brainchild, the Harp-E, is a social impact project and labor of love, initially developed for a large charity in Amsterdam. Joris has since decided to build the entire end-to-end production and global sales & distribution and is now providing affordable harps to eager harpists globally, with some major musicians spearheading the fast growing community. |
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Harp E Electro Acoustic Harp by Joris Beets is Winner in Musical Instruments Design Category, 2022 - 2023.· Press Members: Login or Register to request an exclusive interview with Joris Beets. · Click here to register inorder to view the profile and other works by Joris Beets. |
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