A hurdy-gurdy

[Yuri Terenyi]

This beast is not the usual French Baroque type. The shape is sort of German Medieval-Renaissance, the decoration Renaissance, the trompette Hungarian, and the inner construction also more Hungarian than anything else. The chanter is loud, no need for a second one. (All modern Hungarian h-g-es have one single chanter.) The funny chessman thing is a fine-tuner, similar to what they use on Indian sitars. It's traditional to Hungarian h-g-es, but only on the bass drone. My partner, for whom the instrument was made, for some obscure reason was feeling uncomfortable with thebass drone tuner chesspiece, so I took it off. Who can understand women?...

[Jon Whitney]

What a beautiful instrument. Your partner is a lucky woman.

[Steve Senseney]

Very nice!!

I am impressed.

[Jim McConkey]

Gorgeous! I love the carving on the top. Any pictures of the inside or of its construction?

[Yuri Terenyi]

Sadly, no. I haven't had a camera at the time, only got a new one after it was already finished.
I started making two of them, identical construction, but completely different timbers. (The idea being to see how different the sound will be, of course.) The second one is nearing completion, so there will be a couple of photos soon. Naturally, I have made some rather stupid mistakes in the first one, which are sorted out in the second one. For a start, I misread the inner width of the keybox for the outer one, with the result that once made, it left no room for the drone strings. So I had to spend some time patiently carving away a channel for the two drones from the underneath edges. The second one has a narrower keybox. And no, I don't have internal photos for this one, either, same reason.

[Yuri Terenyi]

So I eventually got around to uploading the other one.
The first one is made using native New Zealand Red Beech for the body, Sitka spruce for soundboard. Red Beech is kind of a mid-range timber, comparable to maple in hardness.
The second one is made from also NZ native Black Maire for the body, Macrocarpa for soundboard. Black Maire is an extremely dense, heavy and resinous timber, in properties it is somewhere around rosewoods. Macrocarpa is a California native, endangered there, but certainly not here. They are planted all around the country as hedgerows. It is a type of cypress. (known over there as Monterrey Cypress if I'm not mistaken.)
Now, as to the result. Well, the plans naturally changed along the way, as they often do. So instead of stringing them up identically, the second one is strung a fifth higher for the chanter and trompette, and a fourth lower for the great drone.(meaning the whole thing is a fifth higher, but with a deeper great drone.) What I suspected about the sound is still very clearly evindent. The spruce/red beech one is loud, but kind of mellow at the same time. (By the way, both are very considerably louder than French type h-g-ies.) The cypress one has a far more penetrating, incisive sound. I'd say there is a considerably heavier emphasis on the overtones. It's not necessarily louder as such, but far more carrying.
So now my partner has two.