At first I was considering this a discussion for makers, but it seems to me
now that it's more than that. This could, and dare I say, should, be of
interest to anyone who plays hurdy-gurdy and wants to keep their instrument
sounding and playing its best.
As most of us understand, there are certain undesirable sounds associated
with the hurdy-gurdy that can generally be blamed on problems with string
pressure. There is a certain ideal pressure of string against wheel that
provides the right sound quality. I know that there is some room for
adjustment based on personal preference, but I think that most of us are
aware that, for example, if the melody strings press too hard against the
wheel, they will get scratchy-sounding and the upper notes on the keyboard
will likely not sound at all - we shim and move on. Also, if your low
wound drone strings press too hard against the wheel, then the pitch of the
note will vary widely with changes in wheel rotating speed. Simple
shimming might not be the easy answer here, but again, usually the culprit
is too much pressure, as long as everything else is in proper adjustment.
I currently have a hurdy-gurdy that is in need of some basic adjustment to
get it up and running, but I'm having tuning problems which won't let me
alone. First of all, I adjusted the pressure of the melody strings on the
wheel to where they should (in my opinion) be, then I adjusted the cotton
on the strings and the rosin on the wheel so that I get a nice clean sound
over the whole range of the keyboard - no problem.
Here's where things become interesting. First of all, the low drones now
tend to change pitch quite drastically when I make minor changes in
cranking speed. If I reduce the pressure, by even a little bit, the sound
of the string looses its fullness, it breaks into harmonics, and it won't
start playing cleanly from a full stop without giving it a pluck to help it
along. I cannot find a middle ground.
But wait, there's more! This next particular problem was discussed here
before, but I'm not sure a satisfactory conclusion was ever reached. When
the chien is made to buzz, the pitch of the sound drops quite
dramatically. Now I know there has been disagreement, or at least
inconclusive discussion, about whether the frequency of the tapping chien
is the same as the vibrating frequency of the string; either way, the
overall effect here is that the trompette drone is tuned to one pitch, and
when the wheel rotating speed is increased a bit and the buzz produced, the
pitch of the combined sounds of string and chien is clearly reduced. I've
heard this effect on a number of recordings (even *gasp* Patrick Bouffard),
although it's rarely pronounced enough to distract or bother me. But this
instrument is suffering for it.
At the time Marcello and Theo exchanged some interesting ideas, but my
question is: why would such problems appear now, years after it was
made? The geometry of the chien / string anchor point hasn't changed
(there's no obvious visual difference, anyway), but this hurdy-gurdy didn't
have this problem before. Is there any conclusive advice that can be given
to solve this problem, especially with the trompette? This thing sounds
great when you get it all tuned up, but as soon as you start buzzing, the
drones go sharp and the trompette goes flat and it's a real mess! Before I
start moving string anchor points around, I thought I'd see if anyone might
have some fresh ideas about this...
~ Matt
- [HG] String setup / adjustment question? Matthew Szostak
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