When converting 4 to 3, we almost always remove the outer melody string.
If you can't find a .020 wound string bass string, just use a plain steel .020. Traditional dulcimers were often strung that way. The lack of winding gives a subtle difference to the overall tone which adds to the 'high silvery' sound which I like.
That milk paint really look good John. Better IMHO than whatever black you used on mine...
I have to agree with Dusty. Electronic dulcimer media are sending the same message as DPN to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, more people today than DPN ever heard of. DPN was the wonder of its time, it brought together players and builders across the country, and encouraged many, many people to take up the art and craft of dulcimer.
But as the song says, "the times they are a changing..." I too miss the old DPN. I always wished it could have been a monthly not a quarterly. Back in the day, 'newsletters' were quarterly mimeographed publications of a few pages sent to a small list of subscribers. The most successful newsletters graduated larger mailing lists and published monthly. The very best became full-fledged glossy magazines. DPN seemed to stall half way between. It went gloss and included ads, but never went monthly. Knowing a bit about the history of publications, I suspect that that was the first step 'downhill' -- it failed to continue to grow. Readers demanded more, and more frequent, information (a trend which electronic media are especially good at), but DPN never made that leap.
What a beauty! I'd say that top and fretboard are walnut, as are the walnut shell sound hole covers. That ET/TE brand is certainly distinctive but I don't know who it is. Is there no label to be seen inside the sound hole(s)?
FYI the instrument has a true Diatonic fretboard layout -- with no 6+ or 13+ frets. Appropriate tunings would be (bass to melody) DAA or CGG. both are 1-5-5 tunings and use the same tablature.
Here's a link to a booklet I wrote several years back called I Just Got A Dulcimer, Now What? which is an illustrated glossary (so we all speak the same jargon) plus answers to many beginner questions about the tuning, playing, care and feeding of your acquisition... The link to the article is at the bottom of this discussion:
Ken Hulme's "I Just Got A Dulcimer, Now What?" Article - Strumelia | fotmd.
You're welcome to red, print and distribute it as you see fit.
"The key of..." depends on which strings you put on the instrument and tuning you want. Knowing the VSL and tuning, us the Strothers String Calculator to determine appropriate gauges of strings
@bvmaestro -- As you've probably read, cardboard dulcimers are as cheap, and as good as you can get unless you build then yourself. If you DYI a batch of instruments you can get the cost down to about $20 each. Check out the program(s) of the Waldorf private school system...
Is he referring to BLUES notes -- which frankly can be any note at all. Or BLUE notes which would only refer to some chart/table of notes which includes some colored blue?
What, exactly do you mean by "blue notes". With dulcimer there are the basic diatonic frets, diatonic frets plus one or two extras, or full chromatic frets like a guitar. In 40 + years of messing about with dulcimers I've never heard the terem "blue notes",
We now know that the term "Scheitholt" was more or less invented by Michael Praetorius in his masterwork De Organographia, in 1618 which described the instruments of Europe at that time. The term is actually the Austrian slang "holts scheit" meaning 'firewood' and referred to a specific boxy form of fretted zither found only in the Tyrol district of Austria. That's like calling all mountain dulcimers Ozark Walking Sticks or Tennessee Music Boxes regardless of shape or place.
Scheitholt was never used to refer to the 'ancestral' fretted zithers of Pennsylvania, where the instruments were correctly referred to as "zithers" or "zitters" by the locals.
I personally go smaller rather than larger in my selection of pegs, Nate. I like 1/2 size violin pegs on most of my builds. I've always felt like many of those pre-Revival dulcimers had 'way too large of pegs for the size of the tuning head and instrument. Probably, as you suggest, because the players had trouble adjusting hand whittled pegs with small heads and short shafts. With well fitting pegs, and experience, the issue is moot. People have been playing small violins since the 16th century.
My two Holly Leaf pattern dulcimers shown here have different size pegs. The larger one has full size -- 4/4 - violin pegs and the smaller one has either 3/4 or 1/2 violin pegs, I can't remember which. When I made that smaller scroll head, the full sized pegs just looked out of place -- too big for the size of the head, so I got smaller ones. The same taper reamer that I have works for all sizes of commercial pegs from 1/8 violin up to full size cello and viola IIRC.
Not a dumb question Nate. There is no apparent socio-cultural link between Hammered dulcimers (a kind of psaltery) and the Appalachian dulcimer(a kind of fretted zither). The only commonality is the shared "dulcimer" cognomen. The hammered dulcimer was a popular parlour instrument in the 1700s and 1800s across Europe and the Americas. It evolved from a Persian instrument dating back to the 900s which spread across Europe in the early medieval period. The Appalachian dulcimer evolved from fretted zither brought to the Pennsylvania colonies in the late 1600s/1700s by folks we today call the "Pennsylvania Dutch".
You asked "...why is there such a noticeable cultural overlap between hammered dulcimer people and mountain dulcimer people?". The answer, IMHO is that they are both, today, uncommon folk instruments (not guitars banjos or mandolins), and both -- as Dusty says, originally pure diatonic. As you suggest, I too suspect that the connection only came about during the mountain dulcimer and folk music Revival of the 50s and 60s.
Yep! Sorry John; Credit where credit is due! YOU made those Lyre pegs and the wrench, not Dan Cox, and a darn fine job you did, too. Mea culpa....
Nate -- here's an idea I got from Michael King, in England, my Lyre plan supplier -- a tuning key for wooden pegs. Dan Cox made this one for me when he made the oversize pegs for my Oberflacht Anglo-Saxon Lyre. You can approach the peg from almost any angle and the 4" or so length gives you plenty of leverage.
Do you mean the peg shaver? If you're making pegs from scratch they are so much less work than trying to whittle a taper with a pocket knife. They used to be very expensive but you can get them now for around $30 that will create several different tapers to match the taper of the peg hole reamer that you have to make a perfect fit.
You can also make your own peg shaver with a block of HARD wood and the peghole reamer you already have.
Personally I use standard commercial violin tuning pegs, Unless you're trying to duplicate the pegs of a particular pre-Revival builder, they are just fine... inexpensive and available in a variety of sizes from 1/8 to 4/4 violin plus sizes for cello and viola. They can be found in a variety of woods and knob designs. I've been paying under $1.50 per peg for the sizes I use.
I agree with John, If you want that traditional look go with Perfection geared violin pegs. Simple to install.
Flint-Hill is indeed an Educational Working Farm in Lehigh County, PA. No mention on their site of Ken Rice (or any other individuals for that matter).
The strings should be just fine as long as they haven't spent a decade in a coastal/island salty air environment. In the photo you posted, the top/sides/head&tailblock seem just fine. Are the bottom planks too short? If so, make that a sort of feature -- glue a short bit of contrasting color 1/8" plank to each end and give it a special "look".
Yep! That's an oldie but a goodie. All original goodies. As John sez, heat gun and gently pry the joints apart, let it cool and dry, and re-assemble. Save the booklets for posterity. Whatever's missing, I know you can make...
I hear there are tens of dollars to be made in dulcimer magazines and websites.
I'm pretty sure she explored every avenue before deciding to close the doors. Things today aren't what they were when DPN started as a mimeographed newsletter all those years ago. Today you need not just writing/editing skills but serious computer saavy. The costs of printing small run publications, especially in the color with the quality we expect today have gone out of sight and subscribers are dropping off as the popularity of electronic media has risen, and the remaining subscribers are less and less willing to pay the costs of production, honoraria for writers, and something approaching compensation for the editor.
The other issue is that a magazine needs in-depth quality material to print, and fewer people these days are doing so. People today seemingly would rather start random "sound bite" discussions on the plethora of dulcimer social media sites.
DPN might... just might... survive as a sort of subscription-based "contributory blog" -- an electronic magazine. Think of a website, similar to FOTMD, where you would pay a monthly or annual fee to read articles, watch short videos, and see photos, but not comment on them except for a thousand words per month (like a letter to the editor). There are already a number of scholarly journals operating on this basis -- JSTOR and Academia.edu come to mind immediately. Subscribers would receive notification emails whenever a certain amount of new material was published. Articles could be read on line or perhaps downloaded for personal use only.
Folks who have interesting things to report about the dulcimer, its use, history, etc, etc. would upload articles with illustrations/photos or video clips (all in appropriate electronic formats) to the editor. The editor would do his/her editorial magic and upload the articles to a website where subscribing readers can access them. Contributors would get paid via Papal or Zelle. There would be paid advertisements interspersed with the articles.
Here again, the question remains whether there would be sufficient interest -- advertisements and people willing to pay a monthly/annual subscription fee -- to support someone doing all that writing, editing, and electronic manipulation, plus support the massive bandwidth and computer resources, etc.
Nate -- there is always the "archive" on issuu.com -- see the link a couple posts below here....
Interesting instrument. IIRC there were several biblical era lyres which used a skin drum as the resonator chamber. Can't really see what you've built, from that vid. Had to go looking.
I found Dennis Havlena's how-to article which, like most of his other homemade instrument DIYs is pretty comprehensive.... Is that what you used to build from?
Hondo dulcimers were pretty good 'offshore' instruments. I've seen and played a number of them. That strange head with it's divots with pins to given the strings a good clean break on a straight stick, was a signature item which some other copied, and others should have done (!). They had pretty decent action height IIRC. A great instrument for a beginner player, and something you can experiment with Wally!
HELP!! I just has someone asking me to help find a post by Richard Lattimer on Everything Dulcimer. . Of course the link she had didn't work because the discussion was on the original ED and the link was a dead end.
I know there were two or three folks who made copies of all if the contents of ED (not just the Tab files) as archives of all the wonderful discussions we had, but I remember who they were, and can't find where I put those links... Anybody??
Gosh -- I'd forgotten about Sweet Music listserv!! Those were the days!
Tom Strothers, creator of the String Choice Calculator and Diatonic and Chromatic Chord Wizard apps passed away suddenly Monday morning 13 February, from a brain hemorrhage. 
RIP old internet friend...
Dusty -- the strings are only attached to the fretboard not the body, so the body would not have stress on it from baritone tunings.
All of the cardboard dulcimers I've seen have very precise fret spacing. With Folkcraft kits you don't have to cut the fret slots yourself (the critical part), just tap the included frets into place the pre-cut slots.
None of the cardboard dulcimers are available with chromatic frets, you would have to calculate, mark, slot and install the extra frets yourself. To make a 4 equidistant string dulcimer all you need is a jewelers small triangular file and file a shallow Vs at equidistant marks on the existing nut and bridge. Baritone dulcimers are all about buying the right strings and tuning correctly to a baritone tuning; nothing else.
As Ken sez, a little ordinary or thin superglue will work just fine. Ideally you'll find a fretwire source with a given tang width and buy a fretsaw with an appropriately thin blade. Before I switched to staple frets I often used a jigsaw with an appropriate blade.
Shootrj2003 -- If you want a "true" dulcimer dating to 1840s there are a bare handful of photos of originals. "True" in this case means having a central raised fretboard -- a major distinguishing characteristic which separates dulcimers from the ancestral Fretted Zithers of the Pennsylvania "Dutch" -- Germans -- who were there in PA long before 1800.
The fretted zither plays basically the same as a dulcimer, but has a very low "staple board" on the straight near side of the body. The photo shows a replica of one which I built from dimensions and photos supplied by the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, PA. The instrument I replicated was made by a man named Jacob Gross, who built it sometime before 1865. It has a traditional diatonic fret spacing, three strings, the VSL is 24", overall dimensions 4" wide and 37" long and a maximum of 3.5" high. John and several other of our Traditional builders saw and played my replica at a Traditional Dulcemore Gathering we held in Kentucky a few years ago.
The short answer is YES.
But if you've ever watched Robert Force perform you have to ask yourself "Why". Why, if someone can do the Magic that he does with an ordinary diatonic dulcimer, why go to the expense of having a chromatic instrument built. Better to spend the time really learning the instrument you already have.
There's also this to ponder... When asked about a dulcimer with “extra" frets, Jean Ritchie replied “In a strict sense it has a different finger board, it’s not quite a dulcimer anymore.”
If you can play better than Robert or Jean, then yeah... go ahead and spend the money.
30+ years as a science and technical writer creating documents large and small!
Adobe Acrobat is, of course, the quintessential PDF manipulation software. You can get a free trial version of Acrobat Standard, which may be all you need to disassemble and reassemble several large PDFs. Or You can buy it for $12.99 per month and cancel within 14 days for a full refund.
Back in 2004 I set the then world record for creating a single large file -- 1.3 terabyte! A project recording all of the re-fit upgrades to the vessel and its science and technical suite of a Missile Range Control ship called the KRS Worthy based on Kwajalein Atoll.
Thankful for friends & family who survived Hurricane Ian whether they lost everything else, or nothing; thankful the dulcimer which has brought me so much joy over the years; and thankful for having been alive for nearly seventy-five years and having seen the changes, good and bad which have taken place around the world.
I believe John does put feet on, and he would certainly do so by request. Freeing up the bottom of the dulcimer to vibrate acts as a natural natural amplifier, giving you a noticeably louder voice... I love Darlin' Corey!
Michael -- John is being modest. he is one of the top five or six replica/traditional instrument builder out theretoday. His Uncle Ed Thomas Kentucky hourglass dulcimers are very sought after!
John's TMBs are very traditional and have a great voice. The big difference is that John's TMBs are made to be played traditionally -- with the melody string only being fretted -- so they have frets only under the melody string. Gibson's TMB isn't very traditional and has frets all the way across the fretboard.
