David Catalunya has conducted various research projects on medieval organs, bells, and keyboard instruments in close collaboration with instrument makers. The recreation of a 15th-century hammered clavisimbalum in 2012 was one of his most innovative projects, carried out in collaboration with the instrument builder Paul Poletti (Barcelona). 

Historical evidence suggests that strung keyboard instruments became increasingly popular in the 15th century. Chief among these sources is Arnaut de Zwolle’s well-known treatise (c.1440), which describes a number of different instrument layouts, as well as two different harpsichord-like plucking actions, a clavichord-like tangent action, and a simplistic piano-like hammered action. Arnaut’s text has provided a great source of inspiration for modern craftsmen wishing to recreate such instruments, given the relatively high degree of detail it provides. The purpose of Catalunya’s and Poletti’s reconstruction project was to explore the territory beyond Arnaut, with the ultimate aim of imagining a design for a hammered keyboard instrument within the confines of medieval technology and musical instrument making. This sort of late medieval pianoforte, or 'mechanized psaltery', as the sources from the period describe it, is able to produce a wide range of dynamics thus proving the 14th- and 15th-century keyboard music with an unsuspected dimension of expressivity and refinement.

The organologic research was published in the Journal of the Alamire Foundation.

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