Harpsichord Services

Instrument Maintenance and Repair

I offer home servicing and maintenance visits by appointment, where I can also attend to minor repairs. On a typical service visit I'll remove and clean your keyboards and keywell, ease any sticking keys, relevel them, as well as check and adjust key spacing and tilt. I'll track down and fix any abnormal clunks bumps and rattles and replace any broken strings or plectra, check your voicing, and fix any hangers. I'll give your soundboard a dusting over and tune the instrument. If your instrument hasn't been seen in a while this might take a few hours - with a regular annual visit we should be done in an hour or so.

Minor repairs can be handled in your home, major repairs are best handled in my workshop.

Instrument appraisal

Pre purchase appraisal: a harpsichord is a substantial investment and you want to be certain that what you're buying is structurally sound and there are no major issues that will prevent you from enjoying making music. A pre purchase inspection and appraisal from us will help you avoid regret and give you confidence in what you're purchasing. Some issues are minor and can be remedied with some maintenance but some issues can be fatal or very costly to repair. A pre purchase appraisal involves a detail inspection of the instrument: you'll get a written report highlighting any issues as well as my frank opinion of the value of your prospective purchase.

New Instruments

I'm a skilled and experienced builder with decades spent improving my craft. All my instruments are soundly based on historical models and I draw on my extensive technical library of detailed drawings and measurements of historical instruments to create my work so that they reproduce the sound and action the original builders intended.

My instruments are completely made in my workshop with a combination of machine and hand tools: I cut and mill every single part of the instrument and I only draw the line at making my own metal hardware: pins and strings, which I buy.

A bespoke instrument is a major project and will take around 18 months to deliver and will cost in the order of $25,000 for a finished instrument on a table stand, more or less depending on what exactly you are after and how much decoration the instrument receives.

I also work to produce my standard model, a Flemish single 8+4 with buff GG-d''' which in my opinion is about the most versatile instrument you can have if you can only own one. It covers most of the repertoire, there's much less tuning and maintenance than a large double, it's more portable and more affordable.

It's worth saying something about this model and my approach to it. All Ruckers instruments had 45 note compasses C/E-c''' and their scaling and plucking points all fall within a narrow range within this compass. This is fine so far but if you wish to give this a practical range of 56 notes to an additional 11 notes, almost a full octave.

This presents a number of problems to the builder about how to adjust the case to fit all those extra notes in. For example in the originals the C string sits on the radically foreshortened hook of the bridge. In the expanded version the GG string now sits on the hook and C is now necessarily on the straight section of the bridge and much longer than the original. In fact the entire case is now lengthened by around 300mm.

The 11 extra notes can't be shoehorned into the original Ruckers single case width, those extra notes span 150mm and getting rid of the endblocks only gives you 75mm so the case is necessarily wider too.

The problem now is that this isn't looking much like an original Ruckers anymore and every modern expended compass instrument has had to resolve these issues which have important impacts for the player and the tone of the instrument.

Here's my approach.

I say endblocks provide the player with important security on the keyboard and some of their width is essential is the instrument is transposing so the case width needs to incorporate them rather than cramming keys up to the cheek and spine so I give the instrument a clear 35mm on both sides to accomodate a fixed block and a removeable block to give full transposing 390/415/440Hz

I say that confining the vibrating area in the bass is an important factor in reproducing the original tone colour and so I preserve that original Ruckers tail dimensions.

To guide me in how to deal with the greatly lengthened instrument and longer bass strngs I've looked to how Johann Fleischer and Albert Delin - who both worked around 1700 and were building expanded compass instruments dealt with this in their work. I think this is a more authentic and less intrusive approach than the later French builders who were rebuilding Ruckers often radically altering their musical qualities.

If I have one of these instruments completed it will appear for sale on this site. I may have one partially completed and if this is what you are seeking then reaching out to me you might find I have one close to commissioning to save some wait time.