...Madam Duck!!!...*wink* If you like to sing in D you can probably sing comfortably in A as well, don't you think? The fifteen bar harp has the following chords as default:

D Gmin A7 Dmin E7 Dmin Amin D7

Eb F7 Bb C7 F G7 C G

I modified my harps almost as soon as I began to play in the early 70's myself but now I have Mark Fackeldy do it. He has a web site under Zephyrhills Autoharp. My favorite is tuned thusly

G9 D4 D6/9 A4 A6/9
Emin F*7 Bmin C#dim F#min
G A7 D E*7 A

. The f#7 and the e7 are partial chords with no third. D and A are good keys for my voice and the harp is well adapted to most fiddle tunes in D and A.

You can move the bars around to adapt to your fingering prefernces on the 15 bar harp as long as the button rows match up with no other modifications. And you can shim the bars with little pieces of rubber band to prevent the famous clacking sound that is a characteristic of the standard autoharps. Look for a blond or maple harp with a sound hole. To familiarize yourself with all the styles of harps watch E-Bay for awhile. The old black harps are kind of rickety and I would avoid them. www.cyberpluckers.org is the primary autoharp list and most of the luthiers post to that list regularly. They like questions.

With some watchfulness you can pick up a good 15 bar harp on E-Bay for about $115 which would probably only need tuning to begin to use for accompaniment. Please feel free to PM me. I love the autoharp and don't mind any questions you would have...harpgirl