To the left you can see a picture of the new style of rosette that is now available. It has a somewhat unusual combination of colors, (with both red and blue), and definitely has a southwestern feel to it.
And at 1/2″ wide, it’s also the biggest/widest rosette available too.
With all of the wood that is being added to the treasure trove, finding the perfect sound and look for your next custom bowed psaltery will be as easy as ABC. Or should I say, Ash, Bubinga, and Chechen! The pictures above are: Curly Ash, Flamed Bubinga, and Figured Chechen; all of which are available for immediate use on a custom bowed psaltery in the Treasure Trove.
Every once in a while, I get stuck on only finishing or stringing psalteries, and if I keep at it too long, it starts to get a little too tedious. Today was just such a day, and I knew that somehow, I needed to make some serious sawdust.
So, I decided to tap into my lumber supply, and start sawing up some of the boards in my collection to be put into the Treasure Trove – destined to become parts of a bowed psaltery someday.
To the left you can see one such board: a piece of quartersawn, curly and spalted Mango – to be used as soundboards. Basically, resawing a board involves cutting a board down its length, with its side standing up on edge. This results in getting a sequence of thinner boards that all look virtually identical, which can then be bookmatched to form either tops or backs of bowed psalteries.
Look for a lot of exciting and eye-popping wood to be added to the Treasure Trove in the next week or two. Soon will be a very good time to place a special order and get your first pick on the new pieces!
I’ve decided to launch a new sub-domain of the Phantasy Psalteries website, entitled: Archimedes’ Workshop. Over the past several months, I’ve been making custom tuning wrenches just for fun, and now I feel it’s time to give them their own official home. (Two examples are shown in the picture on the left.) You can read more about the story as to how this all began here.
In a nutshell, the reason for this kind of (custom) wrench is that they’re long. It’s all about leverage: the longer the handle, the more leverage you have over the pin, (and consequently, the finer adjustments you are able to make on your musical instrument). But I also figured as long as I was going through all the trouble of making a new handle, I might as well make it beautiful too.
Now, to help kick things off and give a little insight into the work involved in making one of these wrenches, I’ve made a video: (and as you might have guessed from the lapses in the video, a custom wrench takes much longer than 4 minutes to make!)
Video: Eric Meier
Music: Kevin MacLeod
I was thinking about Bearclaw Sitka Spruce, and how each one of the tops are completely different from each other. Some have big splotches of figure, others have smaller streaks, and still others have thinner lines and trails of bearclaw figure. Additionally, the figure didn’t seem to continue itself very deeply in the wood, which made it a little bit more difficult to get perfectly symmetrical figure in the bookmatched tops.
None of them, however, looked as though a bear had run his claws across the board, (where the name had first originated from.)
As a result of this uniqueness, I’ve decided to list each Bearclaw Spruce top individually in the Treasure Trove. The top on the left shows some nice figure, along with a very good level of symmetry as well.
This week, probably for the first time this entire year, it feels as though I am finally “cruising” on building psalteries. I don’t have to go out and buy any supplies. I don’t have a cold or flu. I don’t have to make any new jigs or shop fixtures. I can focus on just psalteries.
I’ve been doing some spring cleaning though, and I’m clearing out some of the wood that’s been sitting in my drying cabinet for probably around a year. I’ve found some pieces that I’d forgotten I even had, and some that I’ve just plain neglected. But, you can expect to see a lot of neat new stuff in the treasure trove soon.
I’ll be adding some Honduran Rosewood sets, some crazy Cocobolo sets, (just need to get some side pieces to match them), and some really nice Spalted/Curly Ash, just to name a few.
I’ve added a few new note marker options. (You can check out all the options here.)
The first is the elegant Black Star Diopside. (Which reflects a beautiful floating light within the stone.)
And the second addition is a timeless classic: pearls. (Genuine pearls cultured on a freshwater pearl farm.)
I’m continually experiementing with new stones and new designs for note markers. In the future, I hope to offer even more options. Hopefully one such option that’s coming soon will be red jasper. I can always use about as precious a gemstone cabochons as anyone would want, (ruby, sapphire, etc.) yet these would most likely cost as much or more than the instrument itself. But if anyone is interested, please let me know via email and I should be able to work something out with you.
Well, after quite a prolonged shortage, I’ve finally got my shipment of wound strings! Look for a new batch of bowed psalteries to be listed on the main site: Phantasy Psalteries in the near future.
After having experimented with all sorts of strings during the beginning of the year, I really am leaning toward nickel-plated wound strings as my all-around favorite. (Pictured at left.) The only other string type that I’m still considering is bronze phosphor, which has a tone very similar to the nickel-wound strings, but with a slightly brighter tone; but they don’t last as long as the nickel-plated strings.
I’ve tried all sorts of variations of nylon and silver-plated copper with a nylon core, but in the end, I still feel that nickel plated steel strings are the best overall. I found that plain nylon strings were very mellow, but also extremely “picky” in terms of how they needed to be bowed, and tended to be very scratchy and screechy with the slightest variation in bowing technique.
With the sliver-plated strings with a nylon-fiber core, I found an interesting phenomenon: the string would shift its pitch downward as soon as the bow left the string. It’s my theory that this is due to the inner core being wrapped too loosely. They do have a lot of potential, but they are not without their roadblocks.
Well, I’ve been sick with either the flu, or a really bad cold for most of this week. Consequently, I haven’t been able to finish any psalteries lately, but there are plenty of them on the horizon.
For now, since I am mostly bedridden, (or sometimes “office-chair-ridden”), I decided to make a little slideshow to promote all the great stuff that is available in the Treasure Trove. In case you missed it on my homepage, here it is:
Music: Kevin MacLeod
So just what is Delignit? Delignit is a laminated pinblock material made of European Beech and bonded with phenolic resins. It is widely used in high-end pianos worldwide, and is actually imported from Germany.
In a nutshell, it is a specialized form of plywood that I’ve now adapted to be used in bowed psalteries to give them even more tuning stability. All psalteries from here on out will have an upper surface of Delignit where the tuning pins make contact with the pinblock. (See picture on left.)
Since there are so many layers of wood that contact the tuning pin, the pinblock’s surface is guaranteed to be consistent and free of any large defects. Also, since the wood is cross-laminated with the grain running perpendicular to the adjacent layers, it less susceptible to movement during changes in weather.
What it all amounts to is this: your bowed psaltery will be more likely to remain in tune.
A thankless job, I know. 
I’ve fought and resisted this for a while now, but decided I’d finally cave in and make laser-cut roses available via the special order form. Why did I fight it? Because I like to build everything myself, and there’s just something unsettling about using something that has basically been cut and patterned by a robot. But, I guess I’ll succumb to the demand of these “cookie cutter” items. 
Check ‘em out at: Woods and Materials: Roses and Rosettes and the ordering option can also be found on the custom order form too.
When I first designed the “Phantasy Psalteries” website, the bowed psalteries I made still used plain-steel strings, and wound strings were added later as a new feature. As a result, I’m finding that not everything is a one-to-one carryover from the plain mono-filament music wire of the past.
Most notably, there is the bridge saddle. If you’ve ever seen one of those taut-wire cheese cutters you’ll probably know why a saddle is needed with plain-steel strings. (Which are about half as thick as wound strings.)
Yet I’m finding that when the materials are carried over from the plain-steel construction and used on wound strings, there is an increase in the amount of sustain on the string. As a result, I’ve decided to adapt to this and make all-wood bridges standard with wound strings, while keeping the aluminum saddle as standard if plain-steel strings are used.
This is not to say that the previous options are no longer available for wound strings. (I personally prefer a longer sustain.) Yet to play it safe, I’m using an all-wood bridge with no saddle as the default from here on out.
I hope everyone has had a merry Christmas. I’ve had to set a few bowed psaltery projects aside for the past few days, but I should hopefully be back in full swing tomorrow.
I’m in the process of revamping my website a bit, as I get time. I’m planning on adding more options, and also editing some areas for clarity and brevity. Hopefully the navigation – particularly on the Woods and Materials page, will be much cleaner and easier to use.
I’ve got several new changes to the bowed psaltery that I would also like to roll out along with the revised website. For the psaltery, some changes are cosmetic, but a lot of them are also practical and acoustical improvements. (Such as Delignit laminated pinblocks.)
Anyhow, I hope to have the new site up by the start of 2008, or thereabouts. For now, one (relatively minor) addition can be see in the attached photo: Bearclaw Sitka Spruce. Acoustically, it is identical to regular spruce, but it has a figured top that looks as if a bear has dug its claws into the wood.
