Harpsichord after Johann Daniel Dulcken 1745, double-manual
Charles Burney praises Dulcken in his famous travel notes: The harpsichord maker of the greatest eminence ... was Johan Daniel Dulcken. The all-dominant Ruckers era was long gone, and when Dulcken came from Westphalia to Antwerp in 1738, he was soon able to set new accents there. His successful innovation was to decouple the soundboard from the string tension, resulting in a hitherto unheard-of carrying capacity in a large space. In this way, he was able to transfer the ingenious Ruckers design into a larger instrument format that corresponded to the disposition and size of the time.