I need BASIC dulcimer help - Complete novice
Instruments- discuss specific features, luthiers, instrument problems & questions
Looking at a closeup of that mystery empty fret slot...
My thoughts:
A good luthier would never have put that extremely misplaced slot there in the first place, and even if they did, they would not have left the empty slot there after moving the fret to the right place. So, I think someone later on did this.
If you look closely, there are also indications that other fret slots had been cut and then filled, around where the 6.5 fret might go. Again, that job ldoes not look professionally done.
I'm thinking that 'somebody' who didn't know very much wanted to put in a 6.5 fret by themselves, and they misguidedly decided that frets 6, 6.5, 7, and 8 should all be equally spaced. So they yanked the original 7th fret out and put their new 6.5 and 7 frets in, equally spaced between the existing 6 and 8 frets. Perhaps they could hear that the 6.5 was not in the right place, and they yanked it out agin and filled the slot... but left their new 7th fret in place.
Then later yet, someone else (or maybe the same person again) realized that the (new) 7th fret was in the wrong place and it just wouldn't play in tune, so they pulled it out and put in a new 7th fret back in its original slot. But this time they didn't bother filling the empty slot.. too much trouble trying to hide it or match the color.
I do not think the luthier would have done any of this.
