Rebuild of a new Chinese made hurdy gurdy

This came to me as unplayable and needed a lot of work to get into a playable condition.
The video shows the work that needed to be performed on it just to make it good enough to use as a starter instrument.
I didn't bother doing any finish repair (which would be a nightmare on these) and simply replaced the parts that were a problem.
Unless you have a full working woodshop, $1000 you want to throw away, a working knowledge of the hurdy gurdy, and about 40 to 50 hours of your time these are not for you (I wouldn't do this again).
There are two good things about this instrument; they have a fine structure with well made bracing and reasonable wood choice and use, and the crank and knob are well made.
The remainder of the instrument is in need of work. The original wheel is a paperweight, the drone bridges are chunky and in the wrong place, the main bridge is wrong and poorly attached, the nut is so small as to be unusable, the bearings are poor, the design is fair, the axle may not be aligned properly (critically important), and the list goes on.

[@Templerlord]

Great video and thank you very much! I have passed this video to the maker and translated it for him, hope it would help him learn and avoid these problems in the future.

[@michaelcaplin8969]

Wow, that's so cool! I was thinking this the entire video, like, it would be so good of the maker could see this to be able to improve the instrument, because it sounds REALLY good after the adjustments and replacements... and then you did just what I hoped someone would do. Do you know the maker?

[@unclemick-synths]

I do love the sound of a gurdy being tuned. I was at some early Nigel Eaton gigs and there was something magical about the way he did it - especially when he switched in his chorus pedal.

[@scottmarshallhurdygurdy5968]

Great Video Evil Scott! I thought after all the work, the new wheel etc it actually sounds nice, nice tone. (Very tidy playing) Did you replace the strings with gut?

[@xlerb2286]

Phenolic resin is a useful material in general. I suppose their thought is it was cheap, easily machined, and would be stable across temperature and humidity changes. But it is also hard, smooth, and sort of waxy so I can see where it's not at all a good choice. It wouldn't be worth the effort but I wonder how it would work to cut the original wheel down and add a band of wood around it. A very informative walk through of all the things wrong with it as purchased and the work required to make it usable. Thank you.

[@Murgoh]

Exactly what I thought, turn it down in a lathe and glue a veneer on it.

[@williechops]

How did you get the wheel out to replace it, did you take the back off? If so, how did you do it?

[@raudiobrown]

Hi Scott-- I am working with a very similar HGSO which belongs to a friend. I haven't seen an easy way to change the wheel. Am I correct in thinking you had to remove the back, or perhaps the top, in order to make the change? Thanks for the wealth of useful info in this video. I have forwarded the link to the owner of the HGSO.

[@unclemick-synths]

This has puzzled me for decades - it really doesn't cost much more to build a solid design than a crap design of any product. I'm not talking exotic finishes or fancy features, just four wheels on the wagon. If this had simply been done right I'm sure a lot of folks would have overlooked the finish for a decent beginners instrument. I know I would.

[@fpham8004]

They are produced dirt cheap by people who had no idea how these things should be done, then sold to ebay/alinbaba resellers that try to make money by inflating the price 4x. It's more a decoration than anything else.

[@Murgoh]

Very typical of the Chinese for some reason on many products, they often get the basic construction right but then there's some things that are wrong or just bad quality, like making a nice machined aluminium part and then using totally crap screws or having one dimension just slightly wrong etc. Often these problems can be rather easily fixed and the result will be a nice product but why don't they do them right from the beginning?

[@muddundee]

So 40 or 50 hours to fix it, how much do you charge an hour for that labour? So some mug ends up buying it twice or thrice over!

[@fahnreich]

I did the work for free because the 14 year old kid wanted to learn and I wanted to help him

[@muddundee]

@@fahnreich Fair play to you, not many would do that.

[@fpham8004]

@@fahnreich Kudos

[@solemaster08]

Hello ! i'm not speak inglish, i'm sorry. Hurdy guirdy good (ou) not good? Shop eBay ? Do you have a link to buy it? how many euros? Thank you!!

[@graullas8981]

Not good

[@LilFrg]

As much of an annoyance HGSO are, they are great teaching tools for proper craftsmenship and why certain things are done

[@NizzyCote331]

this hurdy gurdy is actually $60 on etsy and the only problem I had was the wheel

[@googleuser3163]

It's definitely not $60 😂

[@fahnreich]

It's probably not the same instrument but if you paid $60 for it you paid exactly what it is worth

[@bobbyjeffsupremelordofcraz3532]

The only $60 gurdy I know of is the Ugears hurdy gurdy which is more of an art piece that can be played. Probably sounds better than the original version of this one.

[@hurdygurdyguy1]

Gotta say that guitar-like "sunburst" finish is pretty awful!! Nice job upgrading it to a reasonably sounding playable instrument....