Care & maintenance of your clavichord and your harpsichord
I give you here some guidance for the care and the maintenance in good condition of clavichords and harpsichords built in my workshop. The instruments request only minimal maintenance. They hold the tuning well and, as far as they are not subjected to severe environmental conditions, show an excellent structural stability.
Atmospheric humidity and ambient temperature
Cleaning
Avoid the accumulation of dust inside the instrument, in particular on the sounding board. From time to time, remove delicately the dust deposited on the soundboard. If need be, use a light feather duster.
To clean the outside parts, use only wax. Do not use any chemical products.
For the keyboard, clean regularly the veneers with a wet cloth. In the event of an accident or of strong spots, contact us.
Do not clean the keys inside the instrument: they are in natural lime tree and will take in the course of time beautiful taint. Simply use from time to time a vacuum cleaner.
Pitch and tuning
The construction of each original instrument, faithfully reproduced, allows tuning to the ‘original’ pitch associated with it. On request, I can study and build instruments with transposing devices and/or tuned at pitches different from the ‘original’ pitch.
One of the advantages of the fretted clavichords is that the tuning is relatively fast, because the number of choirs is much smaller than the number of notes. The tuning system is easily set manually, without the assistance of any electronic tuning device. For clavichords, do not bend the tangents for tuning: use exclusively the tuning pins. The fretting scheme of your clavichord is already pre-tuned, as the case may be, to the meantone tuning system, to the Werckmeister III or IV temperament, or to any other historic tuning system.
Maintenance of the damper cloth of clavichords
Make sure from time to time that the strings of the same choir are not in contact. There is a natural tendency of strings to get closer under the tension of the felt strip of damper. This tension has to remain weak, but strong enough to assure effective damping. In case strings of the same choir get in contact, loosen slightly the tension of the felt strip. For that purpose, some millimetres of extra cloth are available. Use tweezers for this operation and act with caution.
Replacement of strings on clavichords and harpsichords
The breaking of strings is excessively rare on a clavichord or a harpsichord if the pitch is right.It sometimes happens that the end loop of a string slides and that the string cannot be any more tuned satisfactorily. In these two cases, which remain rare, it is necessary to replace the failing string. The replacement of a string is easy if one follows a standard method. Contact me in that case. With each instrument, I supply a stringing plan.
Atmospheric humidity and ambient temperature
- Never place the instrument in a place where the rate of relative humidity is lower than 50 % (loss of guarantee).
- The ideal level of the relative humidity is situated between 60 % and 70 %.
- Remember always that the main danger for clavichords is a too low air humidity.
- Ambient temperature between 12 and 24°C.
- Never expose the instrument to direct sunlight.
Cleaning
Avoid the accumulation of dust inside the instrument, in particular on the sounding board. From time to time, remove delicately the dust deposited on the soundboard. If need be, use a light feather duster.
To clean the outside parts, use only wax. Do not use any chemical products.
For the keyboard, clean regularly the veneers with a wet cloth. In the event of an accident or of strong spots, contact us.
Do not clean the keys inside the instrument: they are in natural lime tree and will take in the course of time beautiful taint. Simply use from time to time a vacuum cleaner.
Pitch and tuning
The construction of each original instrument, faithfully reproduced, allows tuning to the ‘original’ pitch associated with it. On request, I can study and build instruments with transposing devices and/or tuned at pitches different from the ‘original’ pitch.
One of the advantages of the fretted clavichords is that the tuning is relatively fast, because the number of choirs is much smaller than the number of notes. The tuning system is easily set manually, without the assistance of any electronic tuning device. For clavichords, do not bend the tangents for tuning: use exclusively the tuning pins. The fretting scheme of your clavichord is already pre-tuned, as the case may be, to the meantone tuning system, to the Werckmeister III or IV temperament, or to any other historic tuning system.
Maintenance of the damper cloth of clavichords
Make sure from time to time that the strings of the same choir are not in contact. There is a natural tendency of strings to get closer under the tension of the felt strip of damper. This tension has to remain weak, but strong enough to assure effective damping. In case strings of the same choir get in contact, loosen slightly the tension of the felt strip. For that purpose, some millimetres of extra cloth are available. Use tweezers for this operation and act with caution.
Replacement of strings on clavichords and harpsichords
The breaking of strings is excessively rare on a clavichord or a harpsichord if the pitch is right.It sometimes happens that the end loop of a string slides and that the string cannot be any more tuned satisfactorily. In these two cases, which remain rare, it is necessary to replace the failing string. The replacement of a string is easy if one follows a standard method. Contact me in that case. With each instrument, I supply a stringing plan.