[Harp-L] Bizarre tunings for diddley music

["Rob Harper" <harperrob@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

This may just be crazy talk, but...

Over the last year or so I've been playing a lot of English and Irish
(amongst others) traditional music, which is played mostly in the keys
of D or G (or related modes).  So far I have been using Paddy Richter
tuned diatonic harps, which are great, but I am finding that there are
a load of tunes I want to play where both a C and a C# would be
useful, and my technique is not good enough to get decent bends --
particularly not at the speeds I often need.

Anyway, I've been thinking of a couple of possible tunings to help me out:

1)  Solo tuned C, but with the F# instead of F and one of the adjacent
C's sharpened to a C#:
 C  E  G  C  C# E  G  C C# E
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10
 D  F# A  B  D  F# A  B  D  F#

2)  Completely weird, with the 1, 5  and 9 holes containing C on the
blow and C# on the draw, with the other notes spread between:
 C  D  F# A  C  D  F# A  C  D
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10
 C# E  G  B  C#  E  D  B  C# E

Of course, either tuning would play havoc with any chords, but I want
to play melody only and these should provide all the notes I want.
I'm planning on taking a spare old harp and doing unspeakable
retunings on it soon to see how things work out.  However, I have a
couple of questions...

1)  Does anyone out there have any experience of tunings like these,
or trying to solve the same problem?

2)  I can do basic maintenance and retuning, but it ain't pretty, so
if this looks good from experiments I may get someone more experienced
to put one of these together for me.  I see Seydel offer to do custom
tunings from the factory.  I like Seydel harps, so does anyone have
experience of using this service?  How's the cost and the end result?

Thanks,
Rob