Pondoro -- did I give you copies of my articles for newcomers? I Just Got A Dulcimer, Now What? is an illustrated glossary of dulcimer terms so we all speak the same jargon, plus andswers to many beginner questions about tuning, playing,care and feeding of your new instrument. Here they are
I'm not sure that any single person actually makes any one McSpad. I understood that the group collectively makes the parts and performs the assemblies and at the appropriate time maker's labels with different names are applied to each instrument.
If really want to replace the pegs not just tighten them, Gotoh, Five Star and Schaller are well known brands of tuning machine makers. Stewart-MacDonald (stewmac) has quite a variety for sale at a range of prices. Don't look just for Dulcimer tuning machines, individual guitar tuners (either open geared or closed) work just fine.
Thanks Lisa, for all you do for the dulcimer world! 
The original balalaika was a diatonic fretted instrument, but that changed, IIRC, in the mid- late-1800s. If you can find a diatonic one, hang on to it!
Here's the current, corrected version...
The version that Lisa mentions is stored here under Dulcimer Resources, and I can't delete it, or replace with the correct version.
Did You? by dulcimer Grandmaster Robert Force
Pacific Rim Dulcimer Project by various artists
Any CD by Jean Ritchie
Any CD by Kevin Roth
1) Yes -- in that part of the world, at that time, caves were often used as stables -- a place to protect horses and mules -- among other things. Cave are nice and cool, and require minimum labor to seal against the elements and dangerous wildlife (animal or human).
2) Yes, short hair and beardless are health issues -- they hide fewer parasites and are much easier to clean. Also, Jesus was Semitic, and did not look like a European with a tan.
Hi Jools;
I've assembled, or helped assemble several of those kits, as have others here. If I remember correctly, the only real "hard" part is assembling the top with the space between the two planks; and that's not difficult.
My one suggestion is to use an appropriate size of Forstner bit, and a rasp, to open up the bottom of the tuning head slot, before starting assembly with it. As it comes, that slot is three sided -- two sides and the bottom. But as a player with many years experience stringing and re-stringing dulcimers, an "open" slot makes it a lot easier to run the string ends through the holes in the tuning pins preparatory to tuning. A few stabbed fingers will convince you too! The head works just fine without a bottom, many people make them that way. There's never enough string pressure to both anything.
It does not matter whether your instruments are solid wood, or cheap doorskin plywood... IF it gets dry enough wherever it is that you live, such that you get static shocks when you walk across a carpet sock-footed; then YES you need the house/room humidified. Not just for the instrument but for you! Bowls of water set out with a sponge in them will help -- as long as they are kept replenished. Damp towel(s) over heater vents will help too.
Where I live in South Florida, however, that is never an issue.
Those miniscule (and I do mean miniscule) increases in string diameter will NEVER harm your instrument! You can re-string it as a baritone using much heavier strings and it won't hurt anything.
Send a PM to John Knopf. He's our Homer replicator. He should know what finish was used.
Steel strings are the norm for mountain dulcimer. Never, ever trim the first set of strings on an instrument until they've been played in for a few days. If adjusting the nut/bridge you don't take the string off, just slack them enough to move the strings off to the side.
Personally, I would tune DAA. That way your scale starts at the 3rd fret and you have a few notes below that "low do".
There seems to be something amiss with the graphics. Every time I try to download them the period before jpg is ignored and it tries to open them as a text file. Just give the files common names, you don't need .jpg or .jpeg....
What number is your Ledford? Look inside. There is a Master List of the known Ledford builds, which contains a variety of information.
I have to say, if you really are "dedicated (to) DAd", you may not be happy with that classic instrument. Homer didn't build them with DAd or other Mixolydian tunings in mind, and didn't always use a Mean Tone intonation so his dulcimers would "played well with others"...
The Grumpy Old Men got a private showing of Niles' instruments last spring during our Gathering in Berea, when we took a road-trip to Lexington. Dr. Revell Carr, director of the John Jacob Niles Galley and the Center for American Music, and his staff, graciously removed all those instruments and more from their display cases so that we had a room full of dulcimers to fondle and measure. Yes Niles played the "dulcimer" but many of his instruments were larger than a dreadnaught guitar body and carried as many as 10 or 12 strings!!
Folks who attend the second First Annual Berea Traditional Dulcimer Gathering, May 16-19, 2019, may also have an opportunity to visit the Gallery and Center and see those instruments.
As far as marking notes, I've used little short pieces of colored tubing that slip tightly over the tuning pins.
Thanx Banjimer -- that was a Senior Turkey moment for sure!
Use the Strothers Chord Finder: http://strothers.com/chords.html
Good call Skip. What I do have is a 'cheat sheet' that has the names of the songs and their first measures. I find it hard to remember how to start a song sometimes, when in a high noise environment with lots of other musicians playing away.
Great to hear from you again, Nimrod! I'm glad to hear that your dulcimer in CGc has worked so well for the Sea Shanties and other songs of the sea. Do you know about the site www.contemplator.com?? She has an entire section of Songs of the Sea. One of my favorite water songs is the great 1962 British ditty by Tony Hatch and Les Reed -- Messing About On The River.
I just memorized a couple hundred tunes. Not that hard, since I play be ear. Saves having to lug all that stuff around and spending 10 minutes looking for the tab to Happy Birthday or Mary Had A Little Lamb.
IF YOU ARE RIGHT HANDED, then (usually) the tuning head is on your left, and the melody string(s) are closest to you.
IF YOU ARE LEFT HANDED, the (usually) the tuning head is on your left, and the melody string(s) are closest to you.
The exception is a true Tennessee Music Box replica, which has the tuners at the strumming end of the instrument, not the fretting end.
Thankful that I saw "Jeanne in Paradise" and her husband are safe from the Cali fires. They lost their house and her dulcimers to the flames, but that can be replaced...
Dusty said " it seems reasonable to ask what someone likes about the one dulcimer they identified in response to this forum question."
'Way back at the beginning of this thread I said I like the "high silvery' sound that many traditional dulcimers give. Like my John Knopf-made Uncle Ed Thomas replica, my Bobby Ratliff Sow model Virginia Hogfiddle, and the Ozark Walking Stick that I built a couple years back. All of these are narrow (less than 6") and shallow (under 1.5" deep) with tall fretboards for playing Noter & Drone.
Shape doesn't mean anything -- the three mentioned above are all different shapes. I honestly couldn't pick one except in a "moment of truth" with my boat sinking and my arms full of survival supplies. Then it's whichever one I can reach fastest/easiest just before I roll over the railing into my dinghy. Any one of those could be my "one" dulcimer...
As Dusty mentions, there are a number of makers of "Spider-like" capos other than Spider-brand.
A Spider type capo would have been my suggestion.
Dan makes some wonderful modern style dulcimers. Great quality for a decent price. Earlier this year they moved from Yreka, CA to Wabash, IL, and are happy for the change.
Groundhog is one of many names for a very large underground dwelling rodent. Think underground beaver. Beaver live in water, Groundhogs live underground. They're 16"-20" and weigh up to 20 lbs. Vegetarian, they love to raid gardens and large crop fields and so are considered pests. Relatively easily caught, they were sort of 'survival food' for early pioneers. Reasonably tasty.
We sing about railroad men so much because they were our Industrial Age heroes. They connected one side of this huge country to the other. They worked hard and played hard. England had/has its canals that connected the industrial Midlands to the coastal ports -- Josiah Wedgewood helped build canals so his pottery could get to the coast without half of every wagonload being broken. You also had your Navvies who dug and built, and the sailors who linked the pieces of the EMpire together.
I play the old ballads myself. The Child Ballads and others -- 16th and 17th century versions of the tunes and words that changed dozens of times between there and then, and here and now. From the Elfin Knight to Scarborough Fair. All the dozens of versions of The Riddle Song from Lay the Bend to the Bonnie Broom on down through history.
Most folks remove the outer melody string if they are playing chords as they get a bit more fretboard to press on. Most Noter & Drone stylists remove the inner melody string so there is more space between the melody and middle drone string and less chance of the noter getting caught in the middle drone.
I do play them -- in the old style -- not singing along with the music. Lyres, at least the Anglo-Saxon lyres that I build, come from a tradition that pre-dates singing along with music.
The Cologne Lyre is GABcde, and the Oberflacht is tuned DEFABc
Interesting to see other maker's lyres. Here are two lyres I made: The smaller one, with the mango top, is a replica of the Cologne Lyre from an 8th century archeological site near that city. The larger is a replica of the Oberflacht 84 from a 7th century German archaeological site, with carved kolrose decorations from a Pictish standing stone.
Here's my article on dulcimer Modes and Modal tunings. It has all the Modes, their traditional tuning, and the key of D equivalents.
I think your inquiry about Phrygian Mode is only the second or third I've seen in 40 years. It's just not a Mode that anyone wrote or writes music in, in the last 200 years or more. In that same 40 years of playing, I think I've tuned to Phrygian Mode perhaps twice; for the same reason -- No one has written any music in Phrygian that I have any interest in playing.
Open Aminor tuning -- No matter which way you go -- high or low Am -- you're going to have to change strings to tune to mthe key of A (Bass string is A or a). AEE is the baritone Ionian tuning which could also be AmEmEm of course. AEA is Mixolydian, so AmEmAm. Same thing going to the high a.
There are any number of good chord charts on the Internet (not that I use them, but they are there). Admittedly, most of the chord charts are only for DAd tuning because most chord-melody players only use that tuning...
Check out the Strothers' Chord Finder. It allows you to specify any tuning and shows you chords all the way from the zero fret to fret 17.
http://strothers.com/chords.html
Jimmy -- dulcimer volume is related to the interior volume of the instrument (cubic inches under the hood), square inches of sound hole, and how much the back of the instrument is allowed to vibrate.
Search here for information about a "possum board". Think of it as a non-electric amplifier. Dulcimers create their sound a bit differently than a guitar -- the top has that huge brace called a fretboard, and doesn't create a lot of the sound. If the back is allowed to vibrate freely instead of being muffled in your lap, you get a lot more volume. A possum board, or a double backed dulcimer are two ways to get more volume. A possum board can be made for any dulcimer, and some of us build them for sale on request.
I built a wooden travel box/case for one of my dulcimers that doubles as a possum board.
You can, of course, get an expensive or inexpensive pickup, stick it on/in your dulcimer and play through a mini-amp; but where's the fun in that?
Dulcinina -- Unless we have the same VSL, my strings won't necessarily be your strings. Also I rarely anymore tune DAA or DAd; I tune to Bagpipe C -- that is Ccc. Most of my instruments are 27" -- half way between the short and long VSL McSpads. I use 22 ga plain steel (not-wound) for my bass strings, and for the middle and melody c's I use 11ga.
I feel that plain steel bass strings give more of the 'high silvery' olde tyme sound that I prefer.
If you have a long scale (28+") McSpad in D I would use 20 ga plain steel for the bass and 12 ga for the middle drone and melody.
For a short scale (26") McSpad in D I would use the same 20 plain steel bass, but go up to 14 ga for the middle and melody strings.
What is it you don't like about the sound? The fact that you're in DAA instead of DAd the change can take some getting used to? Is the sound 'muddy', or harsh?
Strings are strings are strings. Brand has virtually nothing to do with things. You choose string gauges according to the VSL of your dulcimer and what open bass string tuning you want -- key of C, D, G, etc. and the accompanying drones and melody strings. A String Gauge Calculator like the Strothers' --- http://strothers.com/string_choice.html --- can guide you. Or purchase any of the 'standard' dulcimer string sets from D'Arco, D'Addario, Martin, etc. Personally I buy bulk strings for a lot cheaper, from www.juststrings.com
"Louder" really isn't a function of strings, but rather how firmly you strum, how your dulcimer is constructed, use of a possum board or not, or several other factors.
When I click on your Attached photo and Open it, the pic shows up plenty large.
Get Noterized.pdf - 87KB