Hurdy-gurdy twenty-three different forms, and there is still no standardized design today. The six-stringed French "vielle à roue" is the best known and most common sort. A number of regional forms developed, but outside France the instrument was considered a folk instrument and there were no schools of construction that could have determined a standard form. There are two primary body styles for contemporary instruments: guitar-bodied and lute-backed. Both forms are found in French-speaking areas, while guitar-bodied instruments are the general form elsewhere. The box form of the "simphonia" is also commonly found among players of early music and historical re-enactors.
Hurdy-gurdy outside the keybox. They also generally have more strings and doubling or tripling of the melody string is common. Some modern instruments have as many as fifteen strings played by the wheel, although the most common number is six. In pop music, escpecially in the popular neo-medieval music, electric hurdy-gurdies are used, wherein electro magnetic pickups convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals. Similar to electric guitars, the signals are transmitted to an instrument amplifier or reproduced by synthesizer in a modified form. Electronic hurdy-gurdies, on the other hand, manage completely without strings. The signals for the melody