Forum Activity for @ken-hulme

Robin has been a member here for years, although he hasn't participated much recently.  He's a great dulcimer player and innovative builder.

Pictures would help.  Especially a close up of the Maker's label inside the instrument.

I've never heard that about not going up/down one string size once you set the action.    I suppose it's possible to adjust intonation by having the strings at different heights, but certainly is not a common technique.  Normally, folks who worry about intonation (not all of us by any stretch) adjust the angle at which the bridge sets to the strings -- usually the bass end of the bridge is something like 1/16" to 1/8" farther down the fretboard than the melody end  rather than exactly 90 degrees to the line of the strings.

Gotta remember that the dulcimer is still a folk instrument.  People keep trying to apply fancy orchestral instrument "tweaks" to an instrument never intended for such things.

In all my 50+ years of playing dulcimer, I've never seen anyone set the action at different heights from melody to bass.  I always set my action height as Nickel & Dime -- a nickel thickness above the fretboard at the first fret, and a dime thickness above the 7th fret.  

I prefer hard woods for nuts and bridges -- the harder the better -- Lignum vitae, Snakewood, Ebony for exotics, Madrone, Osage Orange, Blue Beech, for American hardwoods.

My "adverse conditions" are usually heat, humidity and salt air.  My go-to instrument(s) are my traditional dulcemores with auto-harp tuning pegs rather than wooden pegs.

Make a fan of lengths of 1x2 with cross pieces to hold the wide ends apart.  Mount that to the wall with standard hardware, then attach the dulcimers to the angled arms...

My experience almost exactly parallels that of mu "dulcimer twin" -- Ken Longfield. -- except my journey started in 1974 and half the continent away; he in Pennsylvania, I in Colorado. 

Lovely, John!   Is that based on measurements you took when we were in Berea and Lexington for the Grumpy Old Men Gathering?

Keep us posted -- show us your solution...

Lots of things you could do, certainly.   Personally I would saw the tuning head and headblock on a downward angle, drill 4 new holes, and install autoharp tuning pins as tuners.  This is what Bobby Ratliff did on his Cumberland Travel Dulcemore that I won in a TTAD contest a couple years back. 

Those tuning pins are tapped into pilot holes, and thread the hole as you turn them to screw the pin deeper into the wood.  They hold tuning very well, and are easily adjusted using a clock key or autoharp tuning wrench.  Best of all, they only cost about 40¢ each.  

 Bobby's tuninghead.jpg - 166KB

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.  

 Burnsville1.jpg - 183KB

Nate -- what you show ARE dampers for mandolins.  But bead type fine tuners are/were common on dulcimers; especially the melody and middle drones -- the most commonly adjusted strings...

Nice looking dulcimer.  Never heard of John (definitely John) Dubroff, but there there have been thousands of people who built a handful of dulcimers since the 1960s.  However -- he appears to have done a nice job on this narrow waisted hourglass design.  One interesting thing is that two of the strings have fine tuners -- those light 'beads' or whatever they actually are -- behind the bridge and before the strings bend over the tail piece.  

Send me your email address and I'll send you a PDF of my beginner booklet I Just Got A Dulcimer,  Now What?   It's 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 their new instrument.

Lilley Pad -- Probably best if you start a New discussion rather than tacking this technical question onto the general  Introduce Yourself thread where it won't be seen by others.

Go out to General Dulcimer or Music Question, then click on the + on the top right of the page and give your Question a good name like Pickup Question.  Then put the info you posted here in there.  That way others who have the same question can search and find the answers which you'll get.

Both nuts and bridges are often set into slots on the fretboard.  You SHOULD be able to "switch between tuning... like crazy" without any issue.  And many of us do. 

However.  You did say it is a Roosebeck, and they are not particularly known for their precision.  And of course the VSL is the most crucial measurement on the instrument.  

Hopefully there are marks on the fretboard which show exactly where the nut was originally located.  If so, I would definitely Superglue it in place with a couple drops of glue.  If there are also marks which show exactly where the bridge was, I would glue it in place with a couple drops of Rubber Cement.  Rubber cement should be strong enough to hold the bridge in place when everything is under tension, Then I would get out my tuner and check the accuracy of the scale up and down the fretboard. Once satisfied that the scale is true, then I would use a sharp knife or awl to cut a line in the fretboard to exactly locate things again if necessary...  

Sorry to say I've NOT heard of James Norris.  Can't find any  trace of him, either -- no newspaper stories, no obituary etc. There are hundreds, if not thousands of folks who build a dulcimer or ten or twenty; he could be one of those.   

Can you post photos of the dulcimer you have?  Teardrop shapes aren't as common in Kentucky as the hourglass

Bravo, John!   Love the new website!  Love my Thomas replica too!

Yes... Donate one month, then cancel it...

Sorry I misled you guys about that WOUB program availability.  I couldn't get it either, in spite of the fact it showed on my Passport.  I had our local WGCU Passport person check, and she just got back to me this morning, saying it's only available if you make a $12 per year donation to WOUB, watch the program, then cancel your donation before the first month is up...

The Ritchie video called Mountain Born is different from the one on the series Ramblin'

I have a friend who built a fretboard so that the Nut was 4 notes below the normal Open notes of DAA.  

If you have PBS Passport, the entire Ramblin series is available there.  Jean's episode is Season 1 episode 104.   I'll be watching it later tonight....

Not sure about staple 6+ and 1+ frets but there certainly were some unusual fret patterns used by some builders, certainly!  For example fret patterns to play the Major DAA Scale from the Open fret not the 3rd fret.

1-5-8 is the numeric designation for Mixolydian Mode tunings, so yes, it was used ages  before the 6+ fret came along.  Those of us without plus frets  change tunings from Ionian to Mixolydian to Dorian or Aeolian and the other Modal tunings simply, by changing the open note of the melody string(s).   'Way back, many of the old timers tuned to either 1-8-8 (bagpipe tuning) or 8-8-8 (unison tuning with all strings the same gauge, all tuned to the same note -- a.k.a. Galax tuning.

G -- GDG  Good on a short VSL dulcimer

That slot at the tail end of the fretboard was, IIRC, a Howie Mitchell "thing".  Not sure it ever worked as advertised.  

I think if you had half of the string tension pulling up and half the string tension pushing down, the result is not increased tension but rather a neutralized/balance of tension not helping at all...

Hi Beth!  Where are you in Yorks?  I have e-friends in Hawes and that part of the Dales as well as elsewhere in the UK.  My partner is from Brighton originally but has been here longer than there.   I play mostly the Child Ballads and Border ballads/folk music, using Noter & Drone style.  Three is a good number of dulcimers (although I have more) as you can  tuned in each of the main folk keys...

Matt/Nate -- that 15 degree break angle is very close to the commonly-used-in-dulcimer-builds 12 degree break angle of strings from the nut to the tuners, and from the bridge to where the strings break hard over the back of the fretboard.  Dulcimers with sharper break angles, especially at the tail seem, qualitatively anyway, to have more volume.  I'm thinking of those which have the bridge set all the way to the rear so the strings drop almost 90 degrees to the string pins in the tailblock.

John's given you a good start.  You can also plug the VSL into the Strothers String Gauge Calculator along with the desired open note to determine reasonable gauges.   Tom & Missy Strothers | String Choice

One reason that that instrument might not be so great sounding is that the square area the soundholes seems a bit less than would be common, and there are no holes in the upper bout

"Duckslammer, IIRC comes from a Tom & Missy Strothers ancedote about someone mis-hearing "dulcimer".

Mountain Mahogany does not grow east of Colorado.  It has a Janka hardness of about 3200 -- roughly the same as the Ebonies.  Makes great noters, nuts & bridges for Mountain dulcimers, tippers for bodhran, musical bones, and similar projects.

Thanx John,  Fixed it.  y new eye isn't quite up to par yet... another few days before the swelling goes down.  

Hi @jazzc...  Had cataract surgery yesterday so i couldn't take any pix until today... Here are my two favorite Traditional dulcemores:   
Uncle Ed Thomas replica Kentucky Hourglass by John Knopf on the bottom. Traditionally painted flat black. 
Above is my Virginia style Hogfiddle by Bobby Ratliff
.
Both have the high-silvery sound of traditional dulcemores rather than the more mellow sound of modern dulcimers

 Favs2.jpg - 62KB

Either my Uncle Ed Thomas traditional dulcemore replica by John Knopf; or my  traditional Virginia style Hogfiddle by Bobby Ratliff,  Both with staple frets under the melody string and plain (no 6+) diatonic fret layout.  

Dusty's right.  In English there were no standardized way to spell anything until some years after the Oxford English Dictionary was completely published (1884-1928) and accepted as the standard (taught in school).   Basically between WWI and WWII. And the farther from mainstream society folks were, the more those spellings seem to have varied.  

For example, my Scottish Clan name -- Home -- dates back to 1225 -- has at least 28 ways to spell Home, and people with all those different surnames are genetically related!

Three years ago this was asked by @shannonmilan  "Do you mean to say they also differ on their tuning?"    
"They"  being dulcemores and dulcimers.

Yes and no..   What I said was  " The most common tunings <for traditional dulcemores> seem to have been Unison (all strings the same gauge and same high note -- d-d-d) or Bagpipe (middle and melody strings an octave higher than the bass string D-d-d), with 1-5-5 tunings a close third."

So Yes, they do differ
-- traditional dulcemores  are/were most commonly tuned to ddd or Ddd and other key equivalents
--modern dulcimers are most commonly tuned to DAA, DAd and other Modal tunings (DAG, DAC, etc) and their key equivalents 

and No
-- in that dulcemores and dulcimers can be tuned to exactly the same tunings

.  

Those tuners should have a tiny screw in the end of each knob, which adjust how 'firmly' they stay in tune.  Start with a 1/4 turn tighter and see how that works.  Need more turn a little more...  Too tight and they won't adjust.

Whether tuned perfectly together or slightly apart in pitch, doubled strings should not be louder than one.  The sound waves mesh together perfectly (or nearly perfectly) like fingers interlacing.   The slight wave interferences are perceived as 'richness' of tone  not increased volume.  

I suggest "superglue" -- the thin, slow-set kind, not the 10 second stuff.   Leave the painter's tape on the underside to support the crack but remove the upper tape so you can see the crack.  With the top off of the superglue (for speed), c.a.r.e.f.u.l.l.y  flex the crack open just a hair and wick drops of glue into the crack.  Then close the crack gently uad hold until the glue sets.

You could glue (with Titebond not superglue) a piece of business card across the inside of the crack and trim to fit..  But the simplest reinforcement is to add another couple layers of tape inside there... carefully trimming the edges of the tape so it doesn't show, of course.