Piccies of 10 string Kantele

[Tony Hardie-Bick]

The Dong wrote:
> Tony Hardie-Bick wrote:
>> I know what's under that block of wood!
> 
> An old shilling! ;)
> It's not glued down, DS tape for now.
> The old shilling is wedged with a bit of dense foam.
> The old shilling distorts from too much vibration if placed closer to 
> the middle of the soundboard, which shows even though the SB is about 
> 6mm thick in places, it moves a fair bit..

LOL :) For gluing these things to wood, you need to use epoxy resin. If you can 
somehow clamp 'em down to test the sound (well, I've actually held them in place 
with fingers to test, but it's pretty tricky to get the necessary pressure).

The timbre changes radically after the glue is hardened - it actually becomes 
more dull. Essentially, cheap as they may be, these delightful old shillings 
just take what's going on in the wood, and create a voltage that's exactly the 
same, at that point, provided that they are "part of the wood".

>> You gotta make it stereo, and then listen on headphones. Put the other pickup 
>> maybe six inches away from the first, or experiment a bit (I know, it sounds 
>> different if it's not glued down).
>> It *will* blow your mind.
> 
> I believe you.
> I dunno. I'd have to make a circuit. Don't fancy having two jack sockets 
> tho, which means auto battery shut off on unplug is out.

Yeah - tis a bugger. On the secret instrument that I've done all this on, I had 
to build a MOSFET switch-on circuit so I could use a standard stereo socket for 
switching AND stereo out.

Also, these piezos need a fairly high impedance, >50K, preferably 100K, to avoid 
rolling off the low frequencies, but it sounds like you already got that 
covered. They're basically capacitors driving a resistance, so RC HPF rules 
apply (perhaps you already know all this stuff - apologies if you do).

You could probably build some kindof test circuit to see if it sounded good.

Gotta say, sounds like gold already. All this science can only make it worse ;)

> I'm making another flute, experimental Irish/NAF style hybrid just now.
> Then a stick dulcimer or small bodied acoustic geetar, in similar woods.
> Also a similar, smaller 5 or 6 string Kantele which may be a present..
> Need..more..wood..soon..

Man, I love the sound of those Kantele strings. Really the music of steel and 
wood, writ large :)

Really beautiful work :)

Tony (HB)