In the Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal that I’m building, the strings (i.e., wires) begin at the hitchpins at the left, go over the left bridge, pass a jack (which will someday pluck the string), go over the right bridge, and then end at a tuning peg on the right. The lid sure looked fine in the afternoon sun: When I took a ruler to the Mylar drawing, and measured the locations of the bridge pins relative to the inside bottom of the case, I discovered that the left bridge pins were positioned between 2¾ inches to 15 inches, while the right bridge pins were 2⅛ inches to 14½.īuilding a Virginal: Stringing Progress IĪs I was brushing shellac on the wooden components of my in-progess Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal on Friday, perhaps I could be forgiven for briefly feeling that I was in the home stretch. I assumed that each wire would be positioned so that it ran parallel to the face of the jack. On the end of the key sits a wooden jack with a plastic plectrum that plucks the string.īuilding a Virginal: Stringing Progress IIĪt the conclusion of my last installment of this series of blog entries documenting my construction of a Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal, I realized that my approach to stringing the virginal using a tool I described was flawed. In a harpsichord, a finger presses a key down and the tail end of the key goes up.
They come supplied with tongues held by a stiff little metal wire that allows them to swivel, and a slot for some damping cloth: As I discussed in my previous blog entry, the jacks connect the keyboard with the strings (i.e., wires). One week ago today - on Construction Day 20 - I prepared all 55 jacks for the Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal that I’m building.
The virginal that I’m building from a kit now has 20 jacks installed, each with a plectrum and a cloth damper, ranging from B♭3 through F5, a range that allows me to play the first four measures of Bach’s Prelude in C Major from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier:
Today I finished installing all the jacks in my Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal with Celcon plectra and red cloth dampers: Building a Virginal: Feeling Like I’m Just Getting Started…
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