REPAIRS   &  MAINTENANCE

Cembaloworks of Washington has 1500 sq. ft. of industrial space in Gaithersburg, Maryland with complete machinery and tools to construct, repair and maintain early keyboard instruments. In the past, successful repairs and rebuilds have been performed to a variety of instruments, professionally made as well as customer assembled kits. Extensive repairs include keyboard replacement, soundboard and bridge replacement, hitchpin rail replacement, jack and register replacement, total instrument restringing and complete revoicing.

Structural repairs have included reinforcement of the bentside-cheek joint, wrestplank repositioning, and register gap reclamation in past undertakings. Experience has also been gained in soundboard repair, shimming and reinforcement, as well as modifying bridge down bearing and cutoff bar up bearing.

Instrument modification has involved transforming fixed keyboards into transposing ones as well as changing registers and jacks from plastic to traditional wood ones. Many restringing projects that replace modern music wire with hand drawn wire made from deduced 18th. century metalurgy have been quite successful. The use of birdquill as the traditional plectrum material has also shown success. Finally, attention given to reducing keyboard mass and jack tongue travel have improved certain maker's actions found in instruments made from the 1950's through the 1960's.

Early keyboard instruments require moderate maintenance whether used regularly or not. Cembalowork of Washington has been performing maintenance activities for the last twenty-five years on antiques, modern production instruments, and historical copies. Routine maintenance includes tuning, string replacement, plectra replacement, damper adjustments, and action regulation. Normally, these activities are performed at the instrument's location which may be in the greater Washington-Baltimore area but occasionally are performed elsewhere in the mid-atlantic region. Clients include institutions as well as individuals who demand professional keyboard maintenance.