…keeps my harp guitar blues away. And yours, too!

Greetings, harp guitar fans! Today’s post serves several purposes.

The first was simply for me to catch up on all the images of Schrammelgitarre players I’ve been archiving since 2019. If you were to literally look at just one a day, you’d have over six weeks of entertainment here! However you want to peruse this latest collection, DO not miss the very last image, which I just snagged today (from eBay.de) – it’s definitely a new one on me, and you I’m sure as well!

I was also anxious to put the new Topaz Gigapixel AI to use. So, this should be a noticeably different blog in quality (use your desktop monitor, not your damn cell phone!). The $99 software does things I (personally) cannot do in Photoshop, and quickly. And by quickly, I mean I ran these images through one of the many default settings, which still took some hours to process and organize all. One could take a lot more time to dial in parameters to get optimum “realism-versus-artifacts.” Still – it cleared up the harp guitars a lot, but what it really excels at is faces. As I watched each become clearer and more “real,” I became mesmerized by some of these anonymous countenances from over a hundred years ago. Such characters! And what was going on behind those eyes?!  I hope you’ll enjoy these enhanced “recovered forgotten images” as I’ve tried to bring them more to life.

As an example, the inset here shows part of a low-res eBay postcard image I included on the last such blog two years ago – with my old cleaned up Photoshop maximization. The larger image is what one can quickly accomplish using the new software (which allows for cleaner, but also larger images). I have no idea how it can “recreate” missing pixels of face details, or how “true” the new appearance is, but is sure seems to help! Yes, I know I’m behind the times (and am not about to re-do 10,000 web site images), but this is a nice step forward. Right click to open your favorites in full screen if you like (many are larger than shown in the default blog format).

Finally, once again, this staggering amount of newly discovered historical images – postcards, cabinet cards, personal photos – reminds us of just how popular (and common) these instruments have been. Dare I say, essential?!

So here, in no particular order, are a plethora of Schrammel groups, kontragitarre players, zither ensembles and miscellaneous from Germany, Austria, Bavaria, Poland and points in-between. Relish the instruments…and those expressions!


But wait! There’s more!

This image is remarkable not because the violinist looks just my dad…it’s because the two wappen-gitarre players (shield-shaped harp guitars) have added resonator horns to their instruments! You want your subs loud?!