I had originally thought I would build the kontrabas nyckelharpa using new wood, and spent some time on the web finding suppliers, especially local ones. However I eventually drew a blank locally (though found one later in Bristol – see a later article on making the top).
An alternative suggested itself though – we had an old piano (Collard and Collard from the 1920s) that used to belong to my grandmother – indeed, it’s the one that was bought for my father, who was a great pianist and church organist, to learn on. We moved it to Edinburgh after her death, and used it for a while, but in recent years it had become very difficult to keep in tune, and one of the bass strings was broken. I discovered that no-one wants such ityems these days, and it would have cost a small fortune to get someone to take it away and dispose of it – these old pianos are very heavy!
So I decided to dismantle it myself, and recycle it into a kontrabas nyckelharpa. There’s some excellent wood in an old piano like this!
First of all, it was easy to take most of the front off – everything was screwed together, no glue. I then took all the strings off (to get rid of all that dangerous tension!) and took out all the tuning pegs – that was a long job, each one had to be twisted and pulled out.
It’s when I got to this stage that the fun started.
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