Letter: Hurdy-Gurdy

by Wilfried Ulrich

Originally published in American Lutherie #68, 2001



Dear Guild,

Imagine a special magazine where famous and other pretty good hurdy-gurdy builders inform others to build better hurdy-gurdies. What would you think about a guy who got a parcel with a lot of scrap that makes you laugh when looking at the parts, but which are supposed to have the potential to become a guitar? But what the heck is a guitar? When he finished that monster, it had a beautiful big soundhole where you can hide your socks and underwear when traveling, and he showed it to his wife. “Look baby, that’s what they call a guitar! It makes noise when you scratch over the strings!” “Hah! Good one! What an awful long neck — you can wave that thing like a tennis racket. Why that strange corpus-form like an ‘8’? It cost eight bucks, eh?”

Imagine!