Introduce Yourself!
General mountain dulcimer or music discussions
Another Devonian era person, eh? I joined that age myself back in June. Welcome, welcome. There are several ways to play the dulcimer, to accommodate a variety of 'issues'. We have a number of UK players here, so you're in good company. If all else fails you can build your own box-shaped dulcimer for just a few quid and a day's worth of minor effort, and at least get started learning while looking for a really nice instrument. That's how I started off fifty years ago -- built one so I could learn to play it...
We know shipping to the UK is really expensive. One thought is to have someone here make you a fretboard, which can then be attached to a dulcimer shaped box over there. The fretboard is the critical part, of course, to making the instrument sound good. A good size fretboard is only about 65x4x2 cm and should not be too expensive to ship.
Do you know about the Nonesuch Dulcimer Club there in the UK? it's been around for dog's years. You might google it and contact them to see if anyone has a dulcimer for sale.
If you go to the Beginner Players Group here, you'll find a PDF of a booklet I wrote years ago called I Just Got A Dulcimer, Now What?, which is an illustrated glossary of dulcimer terms (so we all speak the same jargon) plus answers to many beginner questions about tuning, playing, care and feeding of your dulcimer when you get or make it.