Tucked away in the corner of an industrial park, directly under the flight path leading into SeaTac International Airport, there’s a workshop that seems to hearken back to earlier times. Inside, a small corps of “luthiers,” or makers of stringed instruments, bends over workbenches, engaged in the intricate work of building and repairing autoharps.
D’Aigle Autoharps was born in the 1990s in a garage just a couple of miles away. Musician and woodworker Pete D’Aigle had encountered some of the autoharps being imported from Asia. Built of mere plywood back then, the instruments were heavyand soaked up too much sound.
D’Aigle thought he could do a better job — he applied the same luthiery principles one might use in building a good guitar and tinkered a bit. After developing some models that produced better tonal qualities and were easier to hold, he started taking these to music festivals.
Demand for his autoharps increased. By 2008, his business had outgrown his garage, so he took the bold step of signing a lease for the warehouse space. It was, D’Aigle recalls now with a rueful grin, just one week before the stock market plummeted and launched the Great Recession.
He scrambled to maximize the new space, developing a small retail operation in the front of the building and designing the back as a multi-purpose workshop, performance and classroom space. Monthly jam sessions and some legendary “shipping-room concerts” still take place there.
With the economy rebounding, the business has grown and the once-cavernous warehouse space seems to have shrunk. D’Aigle now employs one part-time and four full-time employees, and its autoharps have been sold and shipped to every continent except Antarctica.
“We’re living the dream,” D’Aigle says. “We’re making a living and doing what we love to do.”
As for Antarctica? “That’s next,” he pledges.
Barbara Lloyd McMichael is our ground reporter in South King County, Wash., and author of the syndicated book review column, “The Bookmonger.”
From South King County, Wash.:
Striking a chord in the autoharp business
By Barbara Lloyd McMichael
Pete D’Aigle shows off the “Sparrowharp” model
Photo courtesy of D’Aigle Autoharps