Which instrument?

Which instrument should you consider building? You can be assured all our instruments are of professional quality because they are regularly used around the world for concerts and recordings. To make your choice, you should think about the type of music you might want to play, your budget and the amount of time you have available for construction.

We advize the beginner to consider starting with either our Delin Spinet, Virginal, or the Flemish or French Single. The Virginal is simple to construct and very suitable for the music of the 16th- and 17th-centuries. The Flemish or French Single offer excellent value with the added versatility of registration changes. All these instruments have a 56-note compass which covers most of the repertoire.

Only a small portion of harpsichord repertoire was composed specifically with a double keyboard instrument in mind. While they are a little more complicated to build than the smaller instruments, they do offer the advantage of greater flexibility of registration. The two-manual instruments are ideal for the advanced keyboardist who wants to explore the full possibilities of the harpsichord without limitation.

The clavichords are very expressive instruments—like the piano, their strings are struck. The intimate nature of their sound makes them inappropriate for playing with others, but they are easy to maintain and excellent for practice. The Fretted Clavichord is our most compact and portable instrument. Clavichords are suitable for a wide range of keyboard music, even right up to early Beethoven for the Unfretted instrument.