Sure, you've heard of it . . . Here's what mine looks like. Based upon a popular plan, this one is hewn out of mahogany, meranti and brass; it sports ebony tuning pegs. Even tho' it's bound in ivoroid, it was a tad on the ugly side with a few digs and sand-throughs so it was priced to move. Our current offering is made from solid woods at priced ar $900 and up--enquire.

Other Noisy stuff:

My shop sees the mundane $25 1/4-size classical git-box and the sublime pipa in equal measure. My ex-wife gifted me with the latter, which she picked up in China.

Our shop is delving in the general direction of Mandolae, Offering the full line from the Madolin, the Tenor Mandolin to The Octave Mandola (bouzouki). The Mandola on the left is hand-carved from Bolivian Mahogany, Rosewood and Bubinga and is priced in the range of $700. The Mandolin on the right is a Stewart-Macdonald kit trimmed in gold and with a tobacco-burst finish on the back. $500 when complete.

While at a largish SCA event, one of the autocrats for the event noticed that I was building a hurdy-gurdy and was all too happy to pose here with a similar instrument from her collection.

I've seen this variety called a symphonia, but it has a number of appellations. It is one of the earlier varieties we find and has a variety of interesting features which these photographs seem just barely able to show. The entire unit is a Byzantine-looking box which has a passage to get the tuning key down over the upward-facing tuning pins. It had two harmony strings set at C and G, and a drone which could be adjusted to an octave below either. It was a chromatic instrument, the sharps/flats arranged in a rank above the natural keys.

The lifting of the melody strings from the wheel is accomplished at the end of the keybox by some rests that are there, and not by alternate bridge notches as in the Musicmaker's design I am building. The lifting of the drone strings is via their bridges, quite logically.

The string-bearing tailpiece is adjustable for attitude and tension, and (tho' you can't see it in this picture), there is also a thumb-screw on a shaft to incrementally adjust the scale tength by tilting the bridge forward and back. I suspect these features may have added a certain amount of tonal coloration as well. Most interesting is the separate "dog string" (chien) had a separate tuning key and no less than two other adjusting gizmos to make it go buzz or not go buzz. The purpose of the device is a matter of some contention, but there seems to be some agreement that it gave a percussive punctuation that marked time for musical or choreographic cueing.

This particular model was manufactured in Washington State in the year 2000 by Olympic Musical Instruments.