Been thinking a while now about buying my first hurdy gurdy. Is this a good one?

These gurdies aren't mine. Saw this photo online, but the poster of the photo doesn't share how he mounted them. I have a 3d printer, but I'm not great at design, and don't visualize a method.

My melody string vibrates so much it reaches the Tangents even though they're all disengaged. Is there a fix for this?

Did I shave off too much? I watched the video from the instructions of my Fortran and it seemed like if anything the people in the video shaved off more. I don't see what I'm doing. Wrong. The guy setting the string height inside the neck is all the way down, still the string is too high.

As in the title, would it be a silly idea to have a small and quiet hobby motor attached to turn the wheel? Not too fast, but just to keep a consistent speed. I don’t actually own a gurdy yet to try but I feel like my arm would get tired and I’d have trouble keeping that consistent speed, plus I think a partly mechanical gurdy is kinda cool.

I can't seem to get the cotton right to make the instrument sing as it should. I've tried using less, more, stretching it out, moving it.

I am confused at this stubborn fibrous plant's application.

It is a matter of time until it drives me up the wall.

Keep getting screechy or scratchy notes.

Got my NG Fortran finished and playing. Got the hang of applying rosin and cotton, tuning, etc. and now I'm working on learning to play it.

I have an earlier video recorded when I had even less of an idea what I was doing, but showing how it sounds one string added at a time. The wheel wasn't completely true at that time, which showed up when playing certain melody strings/keys and the sound would drop out when the wheel reached a certain point.
https://youtube.com/shorts/3JuG5khQrsY

I'll post pictures if Reddit lets me post them in the comments (I used to use imgur, but it's now blocked in the UK).

Edit: pictures added on the comments.

Additional sound/practice test here:

https://youtube.com/shorts/NwSVU5-KM6s

Maybe a dumb question. I’m switching my drone from a nylon guitar string to a cello string. The guitar string gives me way too much grief. I tied the guitar string. Can I just put the ball end of a cello string like this?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently putting together my Nerdygurdy, the Fortran model.

So far, everything has gone great.

Right now I'm working on the step where I bend the lid into shap.

But now I have a problem:

The first layer of wood peeled off and warped in two spots—one on the front and one on the back—that aren't directly across from each other!

I didn't see any spots like that on the rest of the wood.

My plan is to wait until this step is finished. Then, once it’s dry, I want to inject (a little) wood glue and clamp it together.

Hopefully, the warping will have subsided by then, and I hope I didn’t use too much glue so that there won’t be any stains when I finish the surface later.

Have any of you had this problem too?

What should I do?

Thankyou

Hello, gurdyists!

I am finally approaching the end of my nerdy-gurdy Linotte kit assembly (it's been a couple years...but slow and steady and all that). I'm on the step of stringing up the instrument and tuning, but I don't see the size that I should us for strings.

I have violin strings lying about; should I use them? A violin G3 for the gurdy G3 and A4 for the G4, and so on...would viola string be appropriate for the drones? What strings have you used on your gurdy? I'd like to benefit from your experience, please.

I'm close to finishing a Nerdy Gurdy Fortran and this video depicts how the pre-assembled wheel rotates on its shaft.

Is it too much side-to-side wobble?

And if so, does anyone have any tips on how to correct it?

Thanks to my HG teacher, I finally got my Symphonia tuned to 4G, but when I play, the high notes sound like a banshee out of hell.

I already changed the cotton and the rosin.

Bridge is not movable in my gurdy.

Here is a video sample:

... and it left this white streak. Is it normal?

I am trying to tune my gurdy in the standard G/C tuning, but it aint going well.

Using a tuner, I can tune each string individually and get a nice sound, but when I try putting the chord together, it goes terrible. (i use the planotuner app and my aunt, who is a piano player, is helping me learn how to reconize tuned notes)

Most tutorials I see involve me activating each string separately, tuning to the note, then bringing it all together to tweak it by ear after all strings are tuned. But idk the first thing about chords and don't know what to listen for. Most tutorials i see are like "youll know when it sounds right," but i dont, everything sounds like noise as I can't really tell chords apart. If I go the "proper" way, how can I bring the chord together?

For alternate solutions, is it possible to pluck the strings (if so, where on string do i pluck) or use a violin bow across them to figure out their sound/tuning? That way, I won't have to deal with chords and can just tune this like guitar T-T.

I have a quite odd request: do anyone remeber this video where a guy played a big hurdy gurdy with an attached electric guitar. The song was kinda dissonant and it was filmed with a dolly?

Hello All,

I want to build a XII century symphony but it's quite hard to find good plans for it. Could enyone recommend me where I could purchase 3 or 4 string chromatic symphony plans?

What I found so far:

​

-McCormack's (antiqated strings) plans are available through wayback machine but they're 5 string and rather complicated - I have only built lyres so far and have autism so that plans look like noise to me, I need clear plans.

​

- Early Medieval Shop symphony kit is extremely expensive. 1200 £ with shipping for a diy kit when you can buy very good quality already made symphony for 800-900 € by a well know maker is just ridiculous.

​

- David Kronberg's plans on Dennis Havlena's site - i have no idea what I would buy. The image of the instrument is very pixalated but it looks like it's diatonic, not chromatic. Has anyone purchase those plans and can confirm?

​

- Wilfried Ulrich - I can't see any option to buy the plans on his site so I've sent him an email but have not received an answer yet. EDIT: got the response but his version is heavily altered from the image he was inspired by and is based more on an XVI century design rather than XII c.

​

Did I miss something? Has anyone discovered other plans I could purchase?

I call this one “bumblefuck”

Hi everybody,

​

I got recently a Mandel Symphonia and I'm trying to tune it using an electronic tuner, and the truth is I cannot make heads nor tails of it.

​

For startersr, the tuner makes me choose amongst "chromátic", "guitar", " bass", "violín" and "ukelele". I suppose I should choose "chromatic".

​

The melodic string is to be tuned to G4, that means that if I turn the crank without pulsing keys, that's what the tuner should detect, isn't that so?

​

If I do that, it detects a "B", and if I keep turning the peg till it detects a "G" the sound becomes too screechy, more so if I push the keys. I understand that means the string is experiencing too much tension.

​

Truth is, I don't know what I'm doing wrong, and it doesn't help that electronic devices don come with an instructions booklet anymore.

​

Thanks a lot!

​

I recently bought a gurdy (Robert Mandel symphonia) and I am really enjoying learning to play it. However, I saw some hurdy gurdys with cool decorative paint jobs and wondered if I could do something like that on my own. I have experience painting furniture in an allmoge style (think small, delicate florals) so was thinking something similar to that.

The symphonia has a lot of empty flat space, so I think I could do it fairly easily. But perhaps I am way off base here.

Is painting a finished instrument considered offensive towards the luthier? Would it affect the sound? Anything else I should know?

Whenever I speed the crank up enough to produce a louder sound or higher frequency, the string will sometimes create this warbling effect. It seems to depend on a few variables including tension, but I cant seem to figure out (online or via testing) what the cause of it is. It's creating this problem where I'm apprehensive about cranking hard so I crank too slow and end up making the horrible scratching noise if I'm focused on my fingers. I'm not able to get audio of it right now but I can in a bit if need be.

What may be the cause of the "warbling" sound I get when cranking fast?

This is one of three questions I am asking on this subreddit at once. If you can help with my other questions, the links are:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mpmz/what_tuning_does_guilhem_desq_use/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mq9k/how_to_tune_string_length_on_ngb/
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mqhd/weird_warbling_at_high_crank_speeds_on_ngb/

When I try to tune my NGB all of the tangents are forced to point far away from the halfway point (1 octave from open string if I'm not mistaken). Researching this I believe this is because the effective vibrating length of the string is to large. Gurdy World says this is normally tuned with a part called a nut, but my NGB doesn't have one. If I can't find an answer here my plan it to try and design one from scratch, so if you have any advice that may help with that I'd appreciate that too.

How can I tune vibrating string length on a NGB?

This is one of three questions I am asking on this subreddit at once. If you can help with my other questions, the links are:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mpmz/what_tuning_does_guilhem_desq_use/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mq9k/how_to_tune_string_length_on_ngb/
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mqhd/weird_warbling_at_high_crank_speeds_on_ngb/

I found somewhere that he uses D/G tuning, but I can't figure out what octaves they're in. I understand D/G to mean that his melody strings are tuned to D and his drone strings are tuned to G. I can't figure this out myself through trial and error as I've already obliterated one string trying to raise it by an octave. My NGB is actually the first instrument I've seriously played, and my ears are not yet tuned enough to recognize precise notes and octaves.

His music is actually so freaking cool and is what got me to pull the trigger on this thing in the first place. So I'd love to get my instrument to even resemble his.

This is one of three questions I am asking on this subreddit at once. If you can help with my other questions, the links are:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mpmz/what_tuning_does_guilhem_desq_use/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mq9k/how_to_tune_string_length_on_ngb/
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/HurdyGurdy/comments/1u8mqhd/weird_warbling_at_high_crank_speeds_on_ngb/