Hi Elisabeth and Kevin, By "high maintenance" I mean the whole cotton issue. Do I put to much cotton, loo little cotton? Tweaking the tangents. One player once told me not to worry about whether I put too much or too little cotton. Eventually I should know how much to put on. Another roadblock was that I had asked to have it set up in D/G as I play primarily Celtic music and figured D/G would be better suited for that.
And, not to dwell on Bruno's comments, but I just wanted to add that this was going to be my one and only hurdy gurdy purchase and I wanted to get it with all the 'bells and whistles' and I wouldn't be able to afford a second gurdy. Now, I'm thinking maybe I should have bought a more basic model instead. They did make a "Symphonie" model which was a lot less expensive. Thank you all for your inspiration. I will definitely make a go of it and, hopefully, will not be putting it up for sale next year. Jake On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Kevin Hughes <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Jake, > > I'm curious as to what problems you are encountering in learning to play. > You used the phrase high maintenance in two of your emails. Could you be > more specific as what these issues are? > > I was once asked to look an Orca from Olympic Instruments. A friend had > borrowed it from another friend(who been give it as a gift but never played > it) and thought that the bridge needed to be lowered(or the string notches > made deeper) and wanted me to look at it and see what I thought. It turned > out that he was trying to tune the open chanterelle to D and so the string > was not making good contact with the wheel. I looked at the paperwork that > came with the instrument, found the chanterelle should be tuned to G, tuned > it, cottoned the string, did a bit of shimming, and the instrument > played. (This was a couple of years ago and I still haven't seen the friend > play it.) But it seemed like the instrument was close to being good to go > when shipped. > > When starting out the cottoning and related shimming is the first hurdle > to overcome. Neil Brook has a youtube video that is helpful for > this. Next is getting used to turning the crank and playing notes. The > Muskett book is good for this as are Neil Brook's DVD tutorials. Aftre > that work in trompette technique. Scott Gayman has a great series of > youtube videos on this. And as with any instrument consistent practice > yields best results. > > You will of course have to replace the cotton from time to time. A > tangent or two may shift and need to be realigned. There could be other > issues that arise, however once the instrument is set up it doesn't seem to > me to need constant tweaking. Other folks may have other experiences. > > I wish you well in your endeavors. > > Kevin > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "hurdygurdy" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/hurdygurdy > > The rules of posting, courtesy, and other list information may be found at > http://hurdygurdy.com/mailinglist/index.htm. To reduce spam, posts from > new subscribers are held pending approval by the webmaster. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hurdygurdy" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hurdygurdy The rules of posting, courtesy, and other list information may be found at http://hurdygurdy.com/mailinglist/index.htm. To reduce spam, posts from new subscribers are held pending approval by the webmaster.
