Where can I find a cheap Hurdy Gurdy?

Well, you’ve probablye been to Olympic Musical Instruments. They’ve got really expensive instruments, but they do look nice. If you like, you could get a painting of one for around 272 dollars. Not as musical I guess, but still…. :-)

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Here’s one for only $1100!!! If you want to build it yourself, the kit is only $660!!! Dude! You owe me a commission!

Here’s some more pretty, historical ones, but they won’t even give a price, so you know they won’t be in your budget. Build your own with a base price of $1400. I think they mean you select the options you want and they build it. They also have one for around $800. Cute fairy playing it is optional, I believe! ;-)

Hope that gets you going.

Yay! Thanks so much for the help!

Maybe, until I save enough money, I should just get the painting. After all, it DOES have a Hurdy Gurdy. Ahahaha!

I would also keep an eye out for a quality, used hurdy gurdy for sale online. And if you buy a kit you might want to consider finding a local luthier to put it together for you, if you can, unless you have pretty good woodworking skill or are willing to aquire them. That will be an additional cost, to have someone who knows what they’re doing build it for you but building a good sounding wooden stringed instrument even from a kit, well, it’s not exactly like building a model airplane, and with the hurdy gurdy you are also dealing with mechanical parts. But if you have the skills and patience to do it kits can be a pretty good idea.

@lillycoyote

My father used to build guitars. He’s pretty skilled at making anything from wood. We’ve already discussed him helping me build the Hurdy Gurdy should I buy the kit.

@peinrikudo6 Well, that’s going to work just fine. Happy to hear that. You have a luthier in the family. They usually work pretty cheap. :-) I would definitely go for the kit then, if your dad knows about these things. My mom bought a Viola da Gamba kit and she wanted my dad to build it but he didn’t feel his skills were of the fine woodworking kind and he didn’t feel confident about building if for her so she found a local luthier to build it and was really a pretty good instrument in the end. I fine instrument for a student.

and @wundayatta has already provided some great links to kits so this should work out very well. Good.

@lillycoyote

Definitely!

I can probably get the kit in a few weeks. And it would make for a pretty nice family heirloom. It would be way more meaningful to have it assembled with our bare hands rather than just have someone else do it. After all, they charge almost $500 from what I can tell just to build the darn things when my dad and I can do it for free.

Hurdy gurdies are actually pretty cool instruments. Unusual ones, with a unique sound, with the vibrating tone and all that.

They really are.

It’s kind of sad how much I really want one. As dumb as it sounds, I was really inspired to play it after listening to Eluveitie. It’s so enchanting. The sound it makes is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It’s so dark yet really beautiful.

It’s the drone. The hurdy gurdy is a drone instrument like bagpipes and didgeridoos. It can be a very beautiful and very haunting effect. It’s not dumb at all.

I love bagpipes, too!

There is such a variety of instruments that are so amazing! I wish I could learn to play them all! It’s one thing to listen to them, but putting forth so much effort and making the music yourself, there is just no greater thrill than that!

And I play dijeridu.

In researching your question, I was quite astonished by the beauty of those instruments. It makes me want one, too. There are so many choices, though. I don’t know which one would be better. Is it used in Kirtan, does anyone know?

I like to collect instruments. It seems like a pretty unusual one to have.

@wundayatta you play the dijeridu (did I spell it wrong above?)? Cool. I really don’t know anything about Kirtan but if you check out the Wikipedia article on drone music, including instruments, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_(music)

It says drone is used:

”... in Indian music and is played with the tanpura (or tambura) and other Indian drone instruments like the ottu, the ektar, the dotara (or dotar; dutar in Persian Central Asia), the surpeti, the surmandal (or swarmandal) and the shank (conch shell).”

Apparently there are a lot of drone instruments used in Indian music. I didn’t realize there were so many different ones, actually I think the only one I’ve heard of is the tambura but maybe have heard or seen the others without realizing it. So, are any of those instruments used in Kirtan? Like said, I really don’t know anything about it.

I like to collect instruments too and now I have my mom’s instruments too. I can’t play a single one of them.