Matthew, A good instrument should have at least 23 keys. Just to give you a better mechanical idea of what is going on, it works like this. The keys are placed in such a way that they are easy to play and as close to possible to the actual position of the given note location on the string. Inside the key box are things called tangents. These are the part of the instrument that actually come in contact with the string. They are like little wooden flags that stick straight up from the keys. These tangents are movable. They rotate on a shaft that goes through the key and the you can position them so that the flag touches the string in the proper position to sound the note. Think moveable fret. This allows you to play and tune the instrument in various tunings and keys. I don't have any good examples of the tangents and how they work on hand although I could put up a picture shortly. Here is a link that shows a more modern design for tangents but the theory is the same. With these you can also set the distance to the string as well as the position along the string. _http://www.saitenklang.de/english/hurdy-gurdy.htm_ (http://www.saitenklang.de/english/hurdy-gurdy.htm) about half way down the page is the picture of the tangents. Lastly, I know that they are cheaper and that they seem to look like reasonable instruments but please if you like music and would like to have an instrument that actually makes it, stay away from the kits. We do are best to try to get others to understand the HUGE IMMENSE VAST difference between kit and pro build instruments and most people ignore the warnings and forge ahead only to later decide that it is not worth the effort to try to make right and never bother to play it. Okay got a picture up try this _http://pictures.aol.com/galleries_ (http://pictures.aol.com/galleries) and type in hurdy gurdy where it says "search tags" (box is very faint for some reason but it is there). Scott
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