[Harp-L] Golden Melody

[Steve Baker <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John wrote:

<Steve,

When was the Golden Melody model first released?  Did it have a wood  
comb at first?  when did it start to be made with a plastic comb?

Questions I've never known who to ask......

Thanks,.

Best regards,

JP>

Hi John,

it's not so easy to answer your date question accurately, as a  
variety of different instruments bore (and bear) the name Golden  
Melody. I'll assume you're asking about the 10-hole Richter harp. The  
basic design is clearly 1950s and was used for a series of 100th  
anniversary harps in 1957, as well as for a number of similar  
instruments from around that time, most of which were confusingly  
named Marine Band, even though they bore no similarity to the Marine  
Bands we know (maybe it was a generic term for 10-holes at the time).  
These all instruments all had the characteristic rounded GM shape  
with full-length closed anodized gold or silver covers, but the  
covers were lower and the comb seemed slightly wider from front to  
back. Totally cool harps, I've been trying to persuade museum curator  
Martin Haeffner to give me one for years without success. I've not  
seen any earlier ones using this form and the name Golden Melody was  
not used at that time as far as I could establish.

The current (gold version) GM came on the market around 1975, at  
least, that's the first time I saw one, and was an update of the '50s  
instrument. It may have been available earlier though. All  
instruments mentioned had plastic combs from the very beginning. The  
1950s ones used some sort of Bakelite material and the later  
(current) ones used injection-moulded plastic. Wood was to the best  
of my knowledge never used for this design. Unfortunately my listing  
of what models were made when (once again compiled by Martin  
Haeffner) omits any mention of the GM, whether 10-hole or octave/ 
tremolo models,

hope this helps,

all the best

Steve

Steve Baker
www.stevebaker.de
www.bluesculture.com