kits: some assembly required?

Jan 14 02:50 UTC 1998

Hmm.  I hope I'm not too far off topic *already*, but ...  I'm on a
hammered-dulcimer mailing list, where there's been a fair amount of
discussion, on & off, of kits.  From some has come the claim that they,
or someone they know, has put together one which sounds & looks pretty
good, at a fraction of the price of a fully-assembled HD; from others,
comments along the lines of "I never heard one that was better than
awful".  The HD world is a place where building your own *from*scratch*
is not all *that* uncommon.  (By way of comparison: How many guitarists
do you know who built their own?  I've played for over 30 years, & hung
out with guitarists some of that time, & never met even one.)  But I'd
judge that a kit would provide you with the opportunity to avoid most
of the precision work which, if done *slightly* wrong, will ruin the
end product - cutting the wood & drilling the holes for the tuning pins.

(Free-associating a bit:
We recently put together a file cabinet my parents had bought; a year or so
ago we assembled a desk for ourselves.  Both of these were cheap materials
(particle board, though not quite the lowest end of the genre), but seemed
to be well designed with decent hardware, etc.  (The instructions were only
so-so.)  I'd say that the prevalence of "some [meaning *all*] assembly
required" stuff may have less to do with the labor cost of assembly than with
the realities of shipping & storage.  But I could be wrong.  In any case,
do these qualify as kits in any meaningful way?)

What are your experiences with kits?  Do they actually provide the
do-it-yourselfer with savings, or do they merely provide the satisfaction
and education of, well, doing it - some of it, anyway - *yourself*?

response 2 of 34:

Jan 14 19:58 UTC 1998

My friend in Holland made her own guitar, out of apple wood, which she said
had to be aged for a few years first.  I don't know how it sounded.  (Before
that she tried for a few years to breed a long-haired grey guinea pig in the
same shed used for aging the apple wood, and since then has been growing 15'
high sunflowers.)  ER, we may eventually ask for advice on how to build
kitchen cabinets and/or shelving, have you experience in that?

response 4 of 34:

Jan 15 00:02 UTC 1998

We made a bench out of one and saved another.  Nice sturdy prefinished wood.

response 6 of 34:

Jan 16 04:14 UTC 1998

The public library has an excellent video on Instrument Makers of Colonial
Williamsburg, showing how harpsichords and violins were made.  Judging from
the video, the kit would save you a huge amount of work.  (There are also
videos on barrelmaking and silversmithing).

response 8 of 34:

Jan 16 23:59 UTC 1998

Or maybe coopery (as in carpenter-carpentry?).  Don't know.

response 10 of 34:

Jan 17 04:51 UTC 1998

There's a book at the public library you may want to check out, davel, only
I've got it right now - it's called 'making wooden folk instruments' or some
such, and includes plans for building a hammered dulcimer from scratch...it
looks like something do-able, if you have a decent amount of carpentry skill.
Of course, I don't have a decent amound of carpentry skill, so what do I
know...

response 12 of 34:

Jan 17 18:53 UTC 1998

I built a harpsichord from a Zuckerman kit in 1965. The kit cost $150, and
the additional wood and hardware ca. $120. The parts that came in the
"kit" were the (unfinished) soundboard (1/8" spruce ply is hard to find),
keyboard (plastic key veneer), jacks and jack rail and slide
(unassembled), and metal parts except hinges. One builds the inner and
outercases, nut, bridge, etc, and also cuts, installs and adjusts all the
plectra. I built it on my living room floor, but used power machinery at
the U. I learned to play it - or rather, some pieces on it - over the next
few years. It is a single-manual, singly-stringed instrument of 4 3/4
octaves with manual piano-forte and lute stops (no pedals). Besides my own
use of it, on some occasions I loaned it out for use in plays or other
performances. I've rather neglected it recently, and it needs a thorough
tuning and 'voicing'.

response 14 of 34:

Jan 17 20:00 UTC 1998

I am quite competent at tuning and voicing my harpsichord. I've converted
from a pitch pipe to my laptop, however. Voicing is *much* more difficult
than tuning, which is what puts me off. It is said that Bach spent an
hour voicing his harpsichord before every time he played it (I suspect
not more than twice a day, though....). 

response 16 of 34:

Jan 17 20:48 UTC 1998

(If it's anything like the meaning of the word for the piano, and I'm not
confusing it with something else, I think it means fixing the tone, rather
than the pitch, of the strings)

response 18 of 34:

Jan 18 04:16 UTC 1998

duh...I dunno... :)

response 20 of 34:

Jan 19 04:04 UTC 1998

what did they use after they stopped using leather, then?

response 22 of 34:

Jan 19 16:13 UTC 1998

What software do you use to tune your harpsichord, Rane?  We will be
inheriting a player piano in the next few years and it will need some
major tuning and will need to be retuned frequently after that.  At
least that is what I am told.  At least I don't need to worry about
voicing, right?

response 24 of 34:

Jan 21 12:00 UTC 1998

I would like to learn to do it myself.  At least to the point of
frustration ;-)  I don't play piano, however, I have a pretty good
ear for such things.