An often asked question from beginners looking to purchase their first hurdy-gurdy is “I live in the US, should I buy an Altarwind?”. Let’s look at some opinions from members of the community on the instruments, problems with depreciation, and price comparisons.

Reviews from Altarwind owners

We reached out to several community members that have owned Altarwind instruments, here are a few anonymous responses we got back.

Response #1

I purchased both the “Moncur” and the medieval gurdy made by Alterwind’s George Leverett. I attend the hurdy gurdy workshop in Indiana every year, and I’m sad to report that for the seventh year in a row, the reputation of Alterwind gurdies at this workshop was very, very poor. In fact, all of the teachers and several of the students who own Alterwind gurdies continuously voiced extreme disappointment and frustration with those instruments.

This wasn’t helped by the fact that of the seven Alterwind gurdies there, four of them had serious problems and were nearly unplayable. There have been many different people at each workshop, and every year I hear many different complaints about his instruments, everything from sticking keys to dogs that didn’t work at all. In spite of the fact that numerous people have contacted him about these problems, he refuses to change the way he builds. There was one fellow who was so frustrated by the poor quality of his Alterwind gurdy that he actually walked out of the workshop.

There is a reason he charges much less than other gurdy makers. He hasn’t put in the time to perfect his craft.I have owned two of his gurdies, but I am a luthier and I was able to do a lot of work on them to get them serviceable. The Moncur had numerous problems including keys that stuck because they were painted. Scott Gayman asked him to stop painting his keys (no other maker does that) but he refused. He has also ignored other suggestions that would have improved the quality of his gurdies. The medieval gurdy I received from him was so shoddy that I was shocked he even sent it out. The bridge was crooked and the string grooves were at an angle and much too deep! I had to make a whole new bridge. I eventually sold them both after getting them to work properly.

I can’t recommend Alterwind instruments at all. His only saving grace is that he is very easy to work with, very friendly and willing to take an instrument back. I didn’t send the instruments back because after seeing the incredibly bad quality of the work I didn’t trust him to fix them and I knew I could do a better job myself. (I’ve re-worked a number of other gurdies including problem instruments that showed up at the at the Indiana workshop.

Response #2

Well, there is a lot to say. General lower quality craftsmanship, bad wheel design, terrible axle design, terrible “bearing” sets, poor handle design, bad handle bearings, terrible keys, terrible tangents (metal tangents that look like they hired a 5 year old to make), terrible and cheap strings, bad trompette design, horrible chiens, heavy, poor finish….basically the only good thing on these $5,000 instruments are the pegs, and those aren’t lined up properly for the instrument (also they are not often even straight).

Community Response to Altarwind

As Reddit is the only hurdy-gurdy community you can view without joining private groups or signing up, we have compiled a short list of threads you can quickly find through the search feature, and read comments about Altarwind instruments.

• Why do people seem to dislike Altarwind?
• Altarwind troubles, seeking repair advice
• is altarwind okay for a very casual player?
• Opinions on the Merry Wood model of Altarwind
• Looking for a Hurdy Gurdy (Beginner)

Join other various hurdy-gurdy groups and do a search for “Altarwind” for additional threads from other communities.

Depreciation

Hurdy-gurdies are notoriously expensive, and many potential players are worried about losing money if they don’t enjoy the instrument they buy. Luckily, because of the long wait times most hurdy-gurdy makers have, they retain their value after purchasing.

Unfortunately this is not the case for Altarwind instruments. You can find a post made back in October of 2020 on the “Hurdy Gurdy Community” Facebook group asking for experiences re-selling Altarwind instruments. Here are 5 experiences selling used Altarwind instruments:

1. “I paid around $2200.00 and was able to re-sell it in mint condition at around $1100.00.”

2. “I paid a little over $3000 and sold it for $2000 in good playable condition with good strings. Just some scratches on the back.”

3. “Well…I had a couple…I bought new and sold for around half price.”

4. “I bought one for 4200 and sold it for 3500.”

5.”I bought one for $2400 and sold it for $1300″

As you can see, typically these instruments tend to lose 20-50% value

Model comparisons

Here we do some price comparisons on Altarwind models vs similar European instruments.

We often hear that buying from Europe is too expensive due to shipping costs and import fees. However, this is often unfounded. If you do research into shipping prices for gurdy-sized packages, you’ll find (depending on where you are) shipping instruments throughout the US, as well as from the EU to the US are similar in price. Shipping from the EU to the US does incur around a 4% import fee for the buyer, however.

Make sure you research into shipping costs and import fees before investing your money into an instrument!

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