As noted above, the impetus for the oval spinet may have been Prince Ferdinando's wish for a compact multi-choired harpsichord suited to the orchestra pit. It may be that the Prince was not satisfied with Cristofori's first efforts in this area, because later on in the 1690s, Cristofori created a different design, his spinettone ("large spinet"), which deployed multiple string choirs at an angle to the keyboard, following the basic principle of the spinet. It may be that Ferdinando thought the spinettone a better solution to the problem of making a small but audible continuo instrument than the oval spinet.