Contacting Olympic Musical Instruments

By snail mail:

Olympic Musical Instruments
Alden and Cali Hackmann
23022 Miller Bay Road NE
Poulsbo WA 98370

By telephone - please remember that we're on the west coast, and we're not morning people:

360-779-4620

By email - please include "hurdy-gurdy question" in the subject line:

cali.and.alden [at] gmail.com - see below if you have any trouble with this address

That's a weird way to write the email address - what's up with that? To send us email, change the [at] to an @ symbol, and get rid of the spaces. For example, bilbo.baggins [at] onering.com would become [email protected]. We used to have actual links to our previous email address on every page of the site. The spambots put us on so many lists that we were getting hundreds of emails every day.

Ordering FAQ

How to order:

Call, write, or e-mail! We could put up a fancy online order form, but we'd rather talk to you directly. Our hurdy-gurdies are not mass-produced and can't be ordered from a form.

Like any musical instrument, a hurdy-gurdy is a deeply personal possesion, so we know how important it is that you get exactly what you need. We build every instrument with as much care and attention to detail as if we were building our own, because we want yours to bring you as much enjoyment as ours give us!

Committing your soul to the hurdy-gurdy:

A hurdy-gurdy is a big commitment, for you as the player and us as the builders. It's a demanding instrument. You need to be sure that this is an instrument that you are committed to playing, and we have a big investment in your playing it. While our hurdy-gurdies are crafted with technique and precision, they are also imbued with our love of the instrument. We put our hearts into building them, and we want our customers to put their hearts into playing them.

There is almost nothing sadder for us than knowing that we're sending away one of our children to be left neglected in a closet or attic. If you are sure the instrument is right for you, by all means place an order. If you are not sure, we suggest that you wait until you are. Come visit us in person, or find someone we recommend who has one of our hurdy-gurdies.

The not-so-fine print about ordering:

If you are sure about ordering, you need to give us a deposit. The amount of the deposit is listed on the pricelist. We accept PayPal or a check. When you give us a deposit, it is non-refundable. You can't change your mind later and expect us to refund your deposit: we already used it to buy wood and other supplies. Once again, the deposit is non-refundable. If you cancel your order, you lose the deposit you paid.

How long you will wait:

If we lived in the ideal world, you could call us up and have us ship out your instrument that day. But like so many good things in life, hurdy-gurdies take time to make. How long? We don't want to obfuscate, but our observation over the years has been that it's almost impossible to give a firm date when the instrument will be ready. Our present backlog is about 6 -9 months for a new instrument order. With that said, we can't promise a particular completion date, because we don't have a crystal ball with which to see the future.

We can promise you that we're working on the instruments in the order we received the deposits, and that we're working hard all the time to shorten our backlog. If we're not working on yours yet, we're working on someone else's with the same attention to quality that you undoubtedly want us to give to yours when we build it.

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