I had a couple of things I wanted to do aesthetically with the
4-string. One, include Anglo-Saxon art appropriate to the original
Sutton Hoo lyre. Two, have metal fittings on the arms. Three, have a
less massive tailpiece, both to reduce the visual impact of the tuners
and reduce the dead vibrating mass behind the bridge.
Sourcing the artwork turned out to be harder than expected. When I
actually needed art, all my search results for original art vanished
into the aether. So, once again, I turned to Jonas Lau Markussen’s
patreon and used the three pieces of art that were available. Fittingly,
two birds and a horse… not bad, not bad. I took measurements and made a
rough profile of the lyre on the computer, which I used to lay out the
artwork symmetrically. From there, I got out the carbon paper and the
woodburner and did as I did before.
The metal fittings weren’t particularly hard to source, but did
delay the project over a month. There exist reproductions of the
original enameled fittings, but I couldn’t use them because the arms on
my instrument are a different size. Such are the troubles of being
“inspired by” rather than a “replica of.” Since my arms were only 3/4”
wide, I found a set of period-appropriate belt fittings that would fit
unobtrusively and were available mirrored.
A long time went by with no shipping confirmation, so I eventually
emailed, and found there had been a production error. I had ordered
gold-plated, but they had made bronze-only and were waiting on a
replacement. I said “screw it, just send the bronze ones,” and soon
enough they arrived.
To attach them, the fittings had two posts in the back. On leather,
one would fold those over like a staple. That doesn’t work in wood, nor
does trying to use them like nails - they’re too soft, and making a
hole loose enough for the nails to survive would risk the fittings
falling off. Gluing would risk the glue losing its adhesion over time or
bonding poorly to the metal. So I drilled holes of an appropriate size,
then wallowed them out into an inverted cone and countersunk them to
accommodate the solder. Then I bent the tips of the fitting posts at
right angles, so they made little hooks. The holes were then filled with
superglue before inserting the fittings. This way, nothing could escape
because it physically won’t fit out. The superglue is wider at the base
than the tip, so it can’t escape the hole, and the bent-over posts hook
into the glue.
For the fine tuners, I found a different style than I had used on
the three-string. The other ones are meant to go on the end of a
tailpiece and extend out past it; these are on a flat pedestal and fit
in a keyhole shape. I carved a small rectangular tailpiece from the same
antler piece I used last time, reminiscent of a simple dowel that would
be normally used for string anchoring with no fine tuners. I was
surprised to find the antler was tolerant of being carved rather thin
without succumbing to stress. I used a section of mini-paracord instead
of braiding my own this time, with two tiny scraps of leather protecting
the soft cedar soundboard from getting dug into too hard.
Aesthetically, aside from the only finish available being shiny
nickel, I was happy with this setup, but these string adjusters weren’t
set up for ball end strings. The other tuners had forks on the business
ends, which was handy for holding onto the knot at the end of the
string. These only have a single hook, which means that has to go in the
middle of the string and get twisted into the string itself. Getting
the strings on the instrument initially was way harder on this one -
adding each string rotated the tailpiece side to side, and the tiny
scoop intended to retain the string had almost no holding power.
Managing that while trying to twist each string into existence was
chaos. It also exposed the other problem with these tuners - in
practice, all of the tension gets borne by one half of the hairs or the
other, rather than going straight to the knot. In a bass string, this is
fine. On a small, taut high string, this causes explosions.
My initial attempt was a G3D3G3D4 unison tuning with a flat bridge. Sounded cool, but I don’t know what to do with it, and
neither does anyone else locally. Even the flat-bridge modern pagan
musicians, who I would want to be able to cover, stick with three
strings most of the time. Curving the bridge means re-tuning, because
having two identical Gs that can’t be used at once is pointless.
So I curved the bridge, and tried tuning in fifths, GDAE, like a
fiddle but an octave down. This is where my high D string broke, and I
needed to swap back to regular fine tuners. This also meant that due to
how I carved the underside of the tailpiece, with a thick rail at the
front to bear the string tension, regular tuners wouldn’t fit. So I
ordered some more tuners, being one short, and carved a new tailpiece
from the beam of the same paddle. This one was even simpler than the
last one - a few holes, a couple of notches, and polish up the slab.
Figuring out tuning the second time took some experimentation on
which notes were possible and how thick of a string was needed. I kept
GDAE initially, but with the low G failing to tune properly, I raised it
an octave to be one note down from the A. Coincidentally, this made a
similar tuning to the three-string, but with extended upper range. Now I
was getting somewhere, because it played familiarly, but had extra
utility. (Would have been really helpful trying to learn Silent Night
for Yule.) Something still wasn’t quite right though; it sounded too
recognizably like a violin, and it didn’t have that droning character
when I changed strings. So I dropped the E by one note, for GDAD, and
found the sweet spot.
Completing this retuning about a week before Coronet, I got to
perform over dinner for King Fabian and Queen Eliska. I think everyone
was too busy with dinner to record, but the instrument was well
received, and I got to infodump at new people over the day. That was
just recently, and further practice with the instruments awaits.
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