Sunny San Diego and the Salvi Inc showroom

I recently made a trip to San Diego at the beginning of December to visit friends and swing by the Salvi showroom.  My purpose of the visit was to form an opinion regarding new Salvi harps.  Admittedly I considered myself a Lyon and Healy boy through and through always scoffing at other brands but I never had the opportunity to play on brand new Salvis.  All of my experiences with Salvi have been limited to very very old harps (30+ years) mostly Auroras and Dianas.  Maybe I haven't found the right harp that makes me think twice about the brand? Maybe Salvi's have improved over the years and are stunning to hear and play- and that's exactly what I found.  I was informed by the showroom manager that Salvi is rolling out a new soundboard design that greatly improves the sound and projection of the harp.  My biggest beef with Salvi harps is that they sound quite lovely and very rich and warm which is fantastic for solo work, however, in an Orchestral setting it would not cut through and be heard as clearly as a Lyon and Healy.  The new board takes care of that and gives the harp such depth and beauty that it was very surprising.  I was assured the new boards are made entirely of wood as some harp makers have experimented with using synthetic materials in their sounding boards, not the case with Salvi it's all wood.  Traditional sounding boards flare from the soundbox roughly around 4th octave or lower but the new boards flare out much sooner like around 2nd octave.  I was able to try all of the harps in the showroom and fell in love with three.  Two apollos and the new Iris in natural- quite lovely.  The Iris is natural will be a huge contender with LH 23 I suspect, it was a complete joy to play.  Anyone who has ever played an old Salvi knows that they are quite heavy, roughly 10lbs heavier than most Lyon and Healys.  When playing the harp you can definitely feel the difference in weight and most especially while loading the harp.  The very first thing I noticed immediately was that it felt very light on the shoulder, the only thing I can compare it to is the old LH 23s that used to weight 78lbs remember those?? Light as a diet coke.  Granted the harps still weigh close to 90lbs and you'd notice it moving the harp but suddenly sitting behind the harp for hours at a time practicing/playing wouldn't be nearly as taxing as before.  In closing, I was never fond of Salvis for Orchestral but found them lovely for solo/chamber work but now with the new board you can finally have a harp that can do it all, solo, chamber, orchestral and much more.