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user-inactivated  ·  4007 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Leonardo Da Vinci's wacky piano is heard for the first time, after 500 years

Given the description, this thing sounds like a beast to manufacture- four spinning horsehair wheels? And each key presses the entire string down onto the wheel? And upkeep would be... rigorous. Horsehair frays, and the microhairs (technical term? Dunno) that create the tone wear down. And new hair stretches I think, which means that every time you replaced the hair on the wheels, you'd have to spend time "tuning" just the bow part of it so that it wasn't too loose. To say nothing of the steel strings.

Re. dynamic- sounds like dynamics were taken into consideration. Harder the string presses onto the wheel, and the faster you pump the foot pedal, the stronger the tone you'd get. Like a violin. And an organ. Maybe a little less dynamism. The harpsichord has no dynamic variance because every string is plucked by a little fork on hitting the key, and the fork jumps at a fixed rate regardless of how hard you hit the key.

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