France
French builders were responsible for important further development of the Ruckers-type instrument. The first step, taken in the mid-17th century, was to change the purpose of the second manual in two-manual instruments: whereas in the Flemish school this had been for allowing the player to transpose, the French makers used the second keyboard to permit rapid changes (i.e., while playing) between different choirs of strings; in other words, they were "expressive doubles".
The French harpsichord reached its apogee in the 18th century, notably with the work of the Blanchet family and their successor Pascal Taskin. These French instruments were founded on the Flemish design, but extended in range, from the roughly four octaves of the Ruckers instruments to about five octaves. The 18th century French harpsichord is greatly admired and has been widely adopted as a model for the construction of modern instruments.
A striking aspect of the 18th-century French tradition was its near-obsession with the Ruckers harpsichords. In a process called grand ravalement, many of the surviving Ruckers instruments were disassembled and reassembled, with new soundboard material and case construction adding extra notes to their range. A number of builders, Taskin included, constructed (often very fine) new instruments and passed them off as Ruckers restorations. A more basic process was the so-called petit ravalement, in which the keyboards and string sets, but not the case, were modified.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Harpsichord
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