Hurdy-posting Continues With The Balfolk Boombox, A Synth Gurdy

July 13, 2025 by Tyler August 1 Comment

The Hurdy-Gurdy continues to worm its way into pole position as the hacker’s instrument. How else could you explain a medieval wheel fiddle being turned into a synthesizer? Move over, keytar — [Rory Scammell]’s Balfolk Boombox is the real deal.

It began life as MIDI-outputting SAMgurdy by [Sam Palmer], which we sadly missed covering (though we did feature a MIDI-gurdy a few years back) but this boombox does far more than just MIDI samples. In a sentence no one ever thought would be penned, this instrument puts a Eurorack on a Hurdy-Gurdy for the ultimate synthwave bardcore mashup. There’s an analog synth, there’s a drum machine, there’s modularity to do whatever [Rory] should desire. There are also sixteen sampled instruments available at the push of a button, including multiple analog Hurdy-Gurdies.

It is, as [Rory] says, “a gig in a box”. There’s no point trying to describe it all in words: it really must be heard to be believed, so check out the demo video embedded below, and if you’re hankering for more info, he produced a fifteen minute in-depth video and if you can’t get enough of the sound, here’s a demo with all 16 sampled instruments. We’re pretty sure one of them is the Sega soundfont, and the 8-bit samples are absolutely GameBoy.

How, exactly, we fell in love with the hurdy-gurdy has fallen into mystery, but we’ve been filling up the hurdy-gurdy tag lately, on your suggestions. This one is thanks to a tip from [Physics Dude] in a comment– thanks for that, by the way– and the tips line remains open if the internet has not finally been scoured of all content both hurdy and gurdy.

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The Cantareel Is Hurdy-Guitar Turned Inside Out

July 12, 2025 by Tyler August 14 Comments

Sometimes, all you need to make something work is to come at it from a different angle from anyone else — flip the problem on its head, so to speak. That’s what [Keizo Ishibashi] did to create his Cantareel, a modified guitar that actually sounds like a hurdy-gurdy.

We wrote recently about a maker’s quest to create just such a hybrid instrument, and why it ended in failure: pressing strings onto the fretboard also pushed them tighter to the wheel, ruining the all-important tension. To recap, the spinning wheel of a hurdy-gurdy excites the strings exactly like a violin bow, and like a violin bow, the pressure has to be just right. There’s no evidence [Keizo Ishibashi] was aware of that work, but he solved the problem regardless, simply by thinking outside the box — the soundbox, that is.

Unlike a hurdy-gurdy, the Cantareel keeps its wheel outside the soundbox. The wheel also does not rub directly upon the strings: instead, it turns what appears to be a pair of o-rings. Each rosined o-ring bows 2 of the guitar’s strings, giving four strings a’ singing. (Five golden rings can only be assumed.) The outer two strings of this ex-six-string are used to hold the wheel assembly in place by feeding through holes on the mounting arms. The guitar is otherwise unmodified, making this hack reversible.

It differs from the classic hurdy-gurdy in one particular: on the Cantareel, every string is a drone string. There’s no way to keep the rubber rings from rubbing against the strings, so all four are always singing. This may just be the price you pay to get that smooth gurdy sound out of a guitar form factor. We’re not even sure it’s right to call it a price when it sounds this good.

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Hacking A Guitar Into A Hurdy-Gurdy Hybrid With 3D Prints

July 10, 2025 by Tyler August 10 Comments

If you’re looking for a long journey into the wonderful world of instrument hacking, [Arty Farty Guitars] is six parts into a seven part series on hacking an existing guitar into a guitar-hurdy-gurdy-hybrid, and it is “a trip” as the youths once said. The first video is embedded below.

The Hurdy-Gurdy is a wheeled instrument from medieval europe, which you may have heard of, given the existence of the laser-cut nerdy-gurdy, the electronic midi-gurdy we covered here, and the digi-gurdy which seems to be a hybrid of the two. In case you haven’t seen one before, the general format is for a hurdy-gurdy is this : a wheel rubs against the strings, causing them to vibrate via sliding friction, providing a sound not entirely unlike an upset violin. A keyboard on the neck of the instrument provides both fretting and press the strings onto the wheel to create sound.

[Arty Farty Guitars] is a guitar guy, so he didn’t like the part with about the keyboard. He wanted to have a Hurdy Gurdy with a guitar fretboard. It turns out that that is a lot easier said than done, even when starting with an existing guitar instead of from scratch, and [Arty Farty Guitar] takes us through all of the challenges, failures and injuries incurred along the way.

Probably the most interesting piece of the puzzle is the the cranking/keying assembly that allows one hand to control cranking the wheel AND act as keyboard for pressing strings into the wheel. It’s key to the whole build, as combining those functions on the lower hand leaves the other hand free to use the guitar fretboard half of the instrument. That controller gets its day in video five of the series. It might inspire some to start thinking about chorded computer inputs– scrolling and typing?

If you watch up to the sixth video, you learn that that the guitar’s fretting action is ultimately incompatible with pressing strings against the wheel at the precise, constant tension needed for good sound. To salvage the project he had to switch from a bowing action with a TPU-surfaced wheel to a sort of plectrum wheel, creating an instrument similar to the thousand-pick guitar we saw last year.

Even though [Arty Farty Guitars] isn’t sure this hybrid instrument can really be called a Hurdy Gurdy anymore, now that it isn’t using a bowing action, we can’t help but admire the hacking spirit that set him on this journey. We look forward to the promised concert in the upcoming 7th video, once he figures out how to play this thing nicely.

Know of any other hacked-together instruments that possibly should not exist? We’re always listening for tips.

A black guitar with red rings on its body is held by a man in a black shirt. Text pointing to the red ring of guitar picks says, "This spins."

1000 Picks Make For A Weird Guitar

August 6, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 1 Comment

String instruments have a long history in civilization, helping humans make more complex and beautiful music. We wonder what our forebears would think of this guitar strummed with 1000 picks?

[Mattias Krantz] wondered what the best number of picks was to play guitar and took the experiment to its illogical extreme. Starting with zero picks and working up through various 3D printed multi-picks he tests all the feasible combinations of handheld picks.

After that, he switches gears to a fishing rod-actuated system of several picks in a ring. Not pleased with the initial acoustics of the picks in this system, he switched to printing his picks in a more flexible filament to better approximate the characteristics of the human thumb. Finally, he takes us to the undiscovered country of a spinning ring of 1000 picks strumming the underside of the strings and the… interesting acoustic result. As many pointed out in the comments, this blurs the line between a guitar and a hurdy gurdy.

If you want more melodic musical mischief, perhaps try this optical guitar pickup, a $30 guitar build, or get fancy with a 3D printed violin?

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Ancient Instrument Goes Digital: The Digi-Gurdy

March 18, 2024 by Donald Papp 12 Comments

The hurdy-gurdy is a fascinating string instrument dating from sometime around the 10th century. There is an active community of modern enthusiasts, but one can’t simply walk into a music shop and buy one. That’s where [XenonJohn] and the Digi-Gurdy come in, bringing some nice features while maintaining all the important elements of the original.

The mechanical keys and crank of the Hurdy-Gurdy are preserved in this modern digital incarnation.

The hurdy-gurdy works by droning strings with a rotating wheel, and the player applies pressure to those strings via keys to play combinations of notes. Here’s a video demonstrating what it sounds like to play one, and one can see a conceptual resemblance to bagpipes, among other things.

The Digi-Gurdy is a modern electronic version that maintains the mechanical elements while sending MIDI signals over USB. It has options for line-out or headphone output. A thriving online community has shaped its development since its inception years ago.

We hope this leaves you wanting to know more because [XenonJohn] has loads of details to share. The main website at digigurdy.com is jam-packed with information about this instrument and its construction, and the project page on Hackaday.io has more nitty-gritty design details and source files for those who crave hardware specifics.

If [XenonJohn]’s name sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve admired his work on DIY self-balancing vehicles over the years. He also submitted an earlier version as an entry into the Hackaday Prize. His careful attention to detail shines through. Check out the two videos (embedded just below the page break): the first demonstrates the Digi-Gurdy, and the second shows off the construction and insides. You’d think a MIDI hurdy-gurdy would be unique, but, actually, we’ve seen more than one.

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MIDI-Gurdy, MIDI-Gurdy, MIDI-Gurdy Man

July 4, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

The hurdy gurdy is the perfect musical instrument. It’s an instrument with a crank, and a mechanical wonderment of drone strings and weird chromatic keyboards. No other musical instrument combines the sweet drone of bagpipes with the aural experience of an eight-year-old attempting to play Hot Cross Buns on a poorly tuned violin.

Now, the hurdy gurdy is going digital. The Digi-Gurdy is [XenonJohn]’s entry into this year’s Hackaday Prize, and it’s exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a musical instrument that drones on and on, with keys plunking out a melody.

If you’re not familiar with a hurdy gurdy, this video is a varily good introduction. It’s a box with somewhere between four and six strings mounted on the outside. The strings vibrate by means of a wooden wheel powered by a crank. There’s a keyboard of sorts along the body of the instrument that ‘fret’ a single string providing the melody; all the other strings are drone strings that sound continuously. I think it was in, like, a Led Zeppelin video, man.

While it’s a slightly complicated build to make an analog hurdy gurdy, delving into the digital domain is easy: [XenonJohn] is building a hurdy gurdy that simply outputs MIDI commands with some buttons and a Teensy 3.6 microcontroller. The parts are 3D printed, and since this hurdy gurdy is completely digital, you can change the tuning of the drone strings without actually tuning them. Awesome.

Hurdy-Gurdy Gets Modernized With MIDI Upgrades

October 25, 2018 by Bryan Cockfield 17 Comments

If you’ve never heard a hurdy-gurdy before, you’re in for a treat. Not many people have, since they’re instruments which are uncommon outside of some eastern European communities. Think of a violin that replaces the bow with a hand-cranked wheel, and adds some extra strings that function similar to drones on a bagpipe. The instrument has been around for hundreds of years, but now it’s been given an upgrade via the magic of MIDI.

All of these new features come from [Barnaby Walters] who builds hurdy-gurdys by hand but has recently been focusing on his MIDI interface. The interface can do pitch-shifting polyphony, which allows the instrument to make its own chords and harmonies. It also has a hybrid poly synthesizer, which plays completely different sounds, and can layer them on top of one another. It can also split the keyboard into two instruments, where the top half plays one sound and the bottom half another. It’s an interesting take on an interesting instrument, and the video is definitely worth a look.

The hurdy-gurdy isn’t a commonly used instrument for hacking compared to something like drums or the violin, of course. In fact we had to go back over ten years to find any other articles featuring the hurdy-gurdy, the Furby Gurdy. It was an appropriately named instrument.

Thanks to [baldpower] for the tip!

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