Dear members,

 

I've been asked to revive a double manual Leigh-Flanders harpsichord. For
starters, I'll have to move quite a lot of tuning pins as the string of the
adjacent tuning pin is touching the other tuning pin. This really interferes
with the tuning of the instrument and I wouldn't be surprised if this also
causes a lot more string breakage compared to a well designed instrument. 

 

Restringing is one of the jobs: already on sight one can see that the
strings are (very) rusty and e.g. in the bass the diameters have been
replaced haphazardly.

Unfortunately the string length doesn't allow to use decent strings like
Malcolm Rose and P-wire throughout the instrument: in the treble, the
sounding lengths are way too long (e.g.: c2 = 38 cm). So I'll have to resort
to using steel spring wire at some point I'm afraid.

 

Apart from all this misery, the instrument sounds very "closed": it's as if
the sound stays in the box and doesn't project. As there is no sound hole in
the soundboard, I was wondering if cutting one would improve things a bit (I
know: the answer will probably be "nope!"). Any suggestions?

 

Otherwise the instrument is in good shape: no cracks anywhere, no mechanical
problems with the keyboard and (plastic) jacks. The intention is to use it
mainly as a basso continuo instrument in a music school.

 

Have a nice week,

 

Chris.


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