Hi Kathy, Cali Hackmann here. BTW while I don't post on the list as often as Alden I actually spend more time building these days than he does.
You've raised some interesting questions and I'd like to address some of them. I would first like to give you a little history as to why we might be a bit picky about kits and about the MusicMakers kit in particular. Firstly, we've had to deal with a lot of disappointed folks who found that after they had expended some money and effort to build one of these kits they didn't in the end get a reasonable instrument. Several years ago Alden and I went through the MusicMakers kit with a fine toothed comb and figured out some reasonable fixes for the problems in the instrument. We wrote a polite letter to the folks who make the kit telling them who we are and what we do and explaining that if they made a few modifications to the kit that it would produce a much better instrument and would make it possible to get a good sound. They essentially told us that it would cost them too much (even though our suggestions were modest) to produce a good kit and they ignored the free help. We then spent a lot of our time helping people build and repair the results until we realized that we were doing a disservice to our customers who were waiting for our instruments. Meanwhile the kit makers were laughing all the way to the bank because our fixes were making the instruments function and people didn't realize that a lot of additional work and money had gone into rehabilitating them. I'm all for folks who have a yen to make their own instrument. Alden and I have given a lot of time to helping folks with info to build their own. I have plenty of orders and I agree with Chris when he wrote that building your own instrument is an education that is worth having. If you think that you can really build an instrument cheaper than buying a professionally made one I have to disagree. If you want a quality instrument that will play well get one professionally made. Those of us that build have thousands of hours of experience with the mysteries of the instrument and have invested in the tooling to make the instrument correctly. The problem I have with poorly made and poorly played instruments appearing in public is this: We have several friends who are professional musicians. They are trying to scratch out a living and it isn't easy. The general public has heard well played violins, guitars, pianos etc. and they realize when it is the player or the instrument that is at fault for a poor performance. The hurdy-gurdy isn't as well known and many people will only hear one in a lifetime. When their only exposure is to a bad instrument, they assume that is what the hurdy-gurdy sounds like. So, when a good musician with a good instrument goes to apply for a job and says that they play hurdy-gurdy, often the response is -- Those things sound awful, go away. They don't even get a hearing. The entire hurdy-gurdy community suffers from this bad image and has for centuries. In the period you represent at the ren-faires there were entire cities with laws forbidding hurdy-gurdy players entrance to the city. Now that's bad press :-) I believe that it's our job as builders and your job as a player to put our collective best feet forward and show the world what an incredibly beautiful instrument this can be. I'm aware that this is quite a task and I know that we have no control over what others do. It does mean that I am doing the community as a whole no favor if I don't truthfully say that the kit instruments rarely produce something that is more than slightly decorative firewood and more suited to being a flower box than a musical instrument. There are some exceptions out there but in every case that I am aware of the builder modified the kit so extensively that little of the original remained. Well, this post is too long already but in closing I have to say that I have played with the SCA and I have done ren-faires and Folklife. I know the conditions and that is one of the reasons that Alden and I spend so much time doing R&D with materials and techniques so that we can produce as stable and playable an instrument as possible. Also, while I respect and admire the sentiment of having your husband build your instrument it can be just as loving a gesture to give your wife an instrument built by a reputable maker that works correctly. Having a hurdy-gurdy player in the house is enough of a stress on a marriage without having one with an instrument that doesn't work well :-)
