Forum Activity for @dusty

Patricia, I wasn't aware that Howard had started building again when you guys were making the film. I thought he started afterwards, perhaps as a result of renewed attention the film brought it!  And I think I remember Wayne posting some pictures of a small dulcimer that Howard was building for him several years ago. Perhaps that was a prototype.

Lisa, the danger buying most of the cheap dulcimers out there is that they are not really instruments but "dulcimer-shaped objects" intended to be hung on a wall somewhere rather than played.  A lot of them have really high action, making them hard to play, and many don't even have correct intonation, so you will sound off even if you are playing correctly.  

Bill Berg and David Lynch are two reputable luthiers who make "student" dulcimers for less than $150.  They are real instruments and will encourage you to play.  However, they are not really small travel dulcimers.  The small dulcimers don't really cost less than the big ones since they involve basically the same amount of work.  One option for you might be a cardboard dulcimer.  Folkcraft sells some that you can either put together yourself or buy pre-assembled.  I played one at a festival a couple of years ago and was amazed how well it sounded, although obviously it did not have extraordinary volume.

But I should also say that I own several really nice small dulcimers, including octave dulcimers by Ron Ewing and David Beede.  They are small enough to fit in a decent-sized backpack or under the seat in front of you on a plane and yet they both have a really charming tone.  They don't have a lot of sustain, but they stand out in a group of dulcimers because of the higher pitch.  They are not really cheap, but they are delightful instruments that maintain their value pretty well.

Almost every day, I am sitting playing the dulcimer and my wife smiles lovingly and then closes the door to whatever room I am in.  I get the hint.

Oh my! I could just kiss you, @Maddie-Myers!   I've been looking for that book for years and I don't know why it never occurred to me to post a note here.  I'll send you a personal message right away. You're the best!

For several years I've been searching for the book of dulcimer tablature that accompanies Randy Wilkinson's album on Kicking Mule records called Elizabethan Music for Dulcimer.  The book came out in 1982, I believe.

Does anyone have a copy kicking around that they'd be willing to part with?

Muchas gracias!

Adrian, I can only compare my McCafferty with the other fine dulcimers I own: Blue Lion, Modern Mountain Dulcimers, and Probst, the latter of which I currently have strung as a baritone. 

My 25" McCafferty has a superior balance, very warm tone, and exceptional volume.  It is not as bass dominant as my Modern Mountain Dulcimer, but is better balanced.  Compared to my Probst, the McCafferty does not have as much sustain, but don't get me wrong; the sustain is very good, just not quite as infinite as the Probst. And the sustain might be a function of the shorter VSL. I have a feeling that the sustain of a 28" McCafferty would be just as remarkable as the Probst.

The action is also wonderful. It takes very little pressure from your fingers to fret a string.  I also find it equally beautiful flatpicked or fingerpicked.  Prior to buying the McCafferty, I used my MMD for flatpicking and my Blue Lion for fingerpicking, but the McCafferty excels in both.  However, I found the strings a bit too far apart for fast flatpicking and moved the melody and bass strings in a little bit so that they are about 1" apart.

I don't know much about electronics, but I love the pickup Terry uses. It is a Twin Spot pickup by K & K Sound.  I plug right into my Fishman Loudbox mini with no pre-amp and no equalizer and the sound is just what you'd want: an amplified but warm, acoustic tone. 

I bought my McCafferty before Terry started making radiused fretboards, so I can't speak to that feature.

In general, I cannot imagine a competent player looking for a high-end dulcimer with a big, round, warm sound being dissatisfied with a McCafferty instrument.  There might be a detail or two (such as the distance between strings) that would have to be customized, but Terry knows what he's doing.  His dulcimers are really nice.  Two members of my local dulcimer group contacted him for their own the first time they heard mine.   A few days after I received my dulcimer from Terry I played in a kind of round robin on a stage with three other dulcimer players. We took turns playing tunes.  Afterwards, a professional player in the audience (he was actually the main act who followed us) told me that the tone of my dulcimer really stood out among the others.  He didn't say my playing stood out, but was only talking about the tone of the dulcimer!

I use something called Metronome Beats.  It can be programmed in any number of ways. I particularly like the visual display options.

Adrian, there is no way to really answer that question.  I have a McCafferty dulcimer and love it.  Obviously, it was worth it to me.  But I don't know how anyone can quantify the variables that add value to a dulcimer. Sound is one issue. So is comfort.  And the visual appeal might be another factor.

My advice would be that if you have to ask if it's worth it, you should probably play for a while before making an investment in your dream dulcimer.  With a McCafferty dulcimer you are paying for some variables that might not be important to you.  Do you want an ebony overlay on the fretboard?  That adds significant cost.  Do you want an internal pickup?  Do you want a radiused fretboard?  Those options probably amount to a third or so of the cost of the instrument. If you don't want those, then you should not buy a dulcimer with them.  If you don't know if you want those options, then wait.

It took me several years of playing to determine my own preferences.  If you are a beginner or have only played a couple of dulcimers, I would suggest not even thinking about spending more than a few hundred dollars for a dulcimer until you have played long enough to know exactly what you want.  (That is, unless you have loads of cash. If you have loads of cash, go ahead and buy a McCafferty.  In fact, buy two, and send me one!  And I'll take a David Beede dulcimer, too, while you're at it.  )

Seriously, though, there is no rush.  Attend some dulcimer festivals and pay attention to the dulcimers that sound good to you. Ask if you can try them.  You will have the opportunity to try some nice dulcimers and you'll have a better sense of how they differ, what your personal preferences are, and what dulcimers might be best for you.

And don't forget to check the For Sale forum here.  McCafferty has sold a lot of dulcimers over the past couple of years. I bet we start seeing a few used.

Lots of good albums out there, but also lots of free stuff on YouTube and SoundCloud.  I learned my first dozen songs or so from watching YouTube videos.  With the videos you can see people play as well as hear the music, so its a great teaching tool.  Just a YouTube search for "mountain dulcimer" will lead you on a never ending but very enjoyable journey.

Well at least we can say that we play an instrument with one of the oldest names for musical instruments.

My understanding, Terry, is that what is referred to as a "dulcimer" in the Book of Daniel was probably closer to a bagpipe than the fretted zither that you and I play, which has much more recent origins, as we know.  The KJV was an English translation from Aramaic and Hebrew, so to really investigate specifically what instrument was meant by the term, we'd need to know those languages.

There are a handful of references to something called a "dulcimer" in literature, but again, our lap dulcimer was probably not what the authors had in mind.

One of the most well known is Samuel Tayler Coleridge's "Kubla Khan":

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssianian maid

And on her dulcimer she played

Singing of Mount Abora.

Jimmy, when the chat is open, there are four controls on the lower left.  The bottom one will minimize the chat.

Once it's minimized it stays on the screen off on the lower right-hand corner.

 Jimmy, you get the same speech bubble icon on your phone or tablet.

You use the speech bubble icon that appears in the upper right-hand corner of message you want to copy when you move your cursor over it.  

I have nothing to add that Ken and Ken have not already stated, except to point you to our group here on Dulcimer Care and Maintenance .

@John-Dunn, have you tried asking @Ken-Hulme for a copy?  It used to be publicly accessible at Everything Dulcimer, but I'm sure Ken can post a copy.

Yes, I'm thankful as well that Jeannie has emerged from the ashes of Paradise even if she lost her home and nearly everything they owned.

"Oh my" is not my reaction to that price. My first thought was "no &^R#ing way!"

I like Howard and his dulcimers as well, but I've never seen a price even close to that for a Capritaurus.

@D-Chitwood and @Brian-G, in addition to a radiused fretboard, Aaron O'Rourke's dulcimers also have what he calls a "reversed flare."  The strings are 1" apart at the nut but .8" apart at the bridge.  That might compensate for what Brian refers to as the difficulty fretting on a radiused fretboard up high.

Susie, if someone asks how many dulcimers you need, the right answer is "one more."

I don't want to go too far astray from the original goal of this thread, but it seems reasonable to ask what someone likes about the one dulcimer they identified in response to this forum question.

I bought my McCafferty before he was making radiused fretboards, so I can't speak about that attribute.  Terry's dulcimers all have a loud, round, well-balanced tone.  The tone resembles a guitar more than the high silvery sound of a traditional dulcimer.  The action is excellent and the intonation is superb.  One feature of McCafferty dulcimers that I love is the extended strum hollow.  Most of us end up strumming over the upper end of the fretboard, and that extended strum hollow allows us to pick and strum there without clacking against the fretboard. Terry uses K & K Sound twin spot pickups inside, and although I don't have too much experience with this stuff, I find them to be phenomenal pickups that provide plenty of amplification without distorting the acoustic tone of the instrument.

Mine is the shortest of the three options Terry offers.  The body of all his instruments are the same size, but he makes three different VSLs: 28", 26.5", and 25".   I think it is inevitable that you lose a little sustain with a shorter VSL, and were I to buy the instrument now, I might get a 26.5" model. On the other hand, I've already gotten use the shorter VSL and have arranged a few tunes that require stretches I wouldn't be able to make on longer fretboards.

I did have to make one adjustment to the instrument before I felt comfortable flatpicking.  The strings are pretty far apart. that works well for fingerpicking and for playing slow tunes, but I found it difficult to flatpick with any speed.  I use a single melody string, and the first thing I did was to move that single string to the inside groove on the nut.  I then made an extra groove for the bass string that was the same distance away from the middle string.  My bass and melody strings are now about 1" apart.  I have thought of making a new nut and bridge with grooves that are even closer than that, but for the moment I am doing OK with that distance.  

If you go to my video page , you'll see that five of my last six videos were made with my McCafferty dulcimer.  And here's a picture of the top. The back and sides are figured cherry and the top is redwood.  The inlay is a wolf in front of a full moon with little stars for position dots.

I'm glad this is only a hypothetical discussion.   Yesterday alone I played three different dulcimers and two different guitars. 

Dana, I was just going to respond to your personal message, but I saw this forum, so I'll respond here instead.

More and more luthiers (including Folkcraft as an option) are making radiused fretboards, but the truth is that unless you barre with a single finger like Aaron O'Rourke or Stephen Seifert, it doesn't really offer an advantage.  Then again, if more of us had radiused fretboards, perhaps more of us would barre with a single finger!

I bought a dulcimer from Terry McCafferty, but it was before he started offering the radiused fretboard as an option.

If the Ewing capo works, then you have your solution.  The Spider Capo should work once you get the hang of it.  Ideally you would want a capo with the exact same radius as the fretboard.

David Beede provides a radiused capo with his models that have radiused fretboards, so you might contact him and find out if he can sell one separately, but unless the radius is exactly the same as the Bella, I am not sure it would work.  According to the website, Bella dulcimers have a 12" fretboard radius.  Terry McCafferty used to sell capos that matched his dulcimers in design, but I don't know if he's started making radius capos. You might send an email to both of those luthiers and see if they can help you.

This is all pretty new.  If more luthiers begin making radiused fretboards and that exact radius becomes standardized, then I'm sure someone will start making radiused capos to match.

Sometimes there are sensible answers, Jane.  As @Ken-Hulme says, "railroad men were our industrial age heroes." Part of the national myth of America is a modern society slowly moving westward over a whole continent.  A simple image in a western film might be a railroad moving through the wilderness, and we all understand the symbolism. 

But it's also the case that the period of history when the railroads were built (1860s-WWI) corresponds exactly to what is known as the "golden age of folklore" when professional folklorists went around collecting popular music and stories, often precisely because they had a sense that as the railroads and other agents of modernization were transforming society, an effort was needed to capture that "folk wisdom" before it was gone forever. Very simply, a lot of folklore collections were made during the period when a lot of people got jobs on the railroad.   Working on the railroad, dollar and a dime a day/Give my woman the dollar, and throw the dime away

American music of a later period would have more songs about cars than about railroads.  Riding around in my automobile/My baby beside me at the wheel

Welcome to the dulcimer community, Jane.  Online, we can communicate faster than they could during the age of ships, the age of railroads, and the age of automobiles.

I call my dulcimers family.   

I have several wonderful dulcimers, and they serve different purposes. A tune that shines on one does not necessarily work so well on another.  However, at any given time I usually consider one of them my "numero uno."  Right now that would be my cherry/redwood McCafferty with a 25" VSL.  It works equally well for fingerpicking and flatpicking.  But ask me in a few months and my answer will be different.

Playing only one dulcimer is like drinking only one kind of wine.

@Kusani, the burl maple top on that dulcimer is astounding!

The site seems to be working well, Stephen.  I'm hoping someone posts something from Hawaii so my listings will no longer be the most westerly on the map.

Jimmy, go to the Members page by clicking "Members" from the tool bar on top of the page. Then you can type in a portion of the member's name and you will see all the possible options.  You then click on whichever one you are searching for.

I just did that and put "Jimmy" in the search bar.

JP, As Ken says, clicking on the thumbnail of your picture opens it up in the browser sufficiently large. If you click on the file name it asks you to download it.

However, there is also another way to embed pictures in posts. You chose to attach your picture using the "Attach File" button.  You can also directly embed a picture using the "Embed Local Media" tab, which is the penultimate icon on the tool bar. It looks like a piece of film.  If you click on that you can embed a picture directly into the text box.  You will have the option of about 14 different picture sizes.  The medium option looks like this:

Well I was able to play the song with little trouble.  The dulcimer sounds great, Dave. It's got a nice deep voice.

I say "little" trouble because Windows first asked me what software to use to open the file (shouldn't that be automatic?) and then claimed the file extension was unrecognizable, but when I told it to play the file anyway, it worked fine.

Don, check out this video by @Christine-Shoemaker. She is using a stand by Gary Sager of Prussia Valley Dulcimers. It looks fully adjustable. Something like that would probably be the best option.

Other good options are keyboard stands or even an ironing board.

I can't take credit for this. I learned about Howard Feed n Wax from this video by Bing Futch , and Bing credits FOTMD member and luthier extraordinaire David Beede.  It sure does wonders for an old instrument, doesn't it?

Dave, you've received solid answers to most of your questions.  Aren't FOTMD folks grand?

I have one suggestion.  If the wood feels dry, it probably is.  You might try a product such as Howard's Feed n Wax .  You put a tiny bit on a rag and rub it into the wood. Then take another rag, wipe off any excess, and let it sit 20-30 minutes.  If the wood is seriously dried out you might need more than a tiny bit since the wood will soak the stuff up. But start with as little as possible. Use it before you put on new strings so you can get to the fretboard, too. My guess is the dulcimer will show its health and happiness by really shining.  I use it periodically on all my dulcimers except the one that has a heavy lacquer finish.

I think you're probably right, Strumelia.  ED had a list of dulcimer clubs and instructors and other resources and gave the appearance of being comprehensive.  I will be forever grateful to ED for introducing me to the dulcimer and allowing me to ask all sorts of (what now seem to be ) ridiculous beginner questions.  However, I found some of the resources there outdated. When I searched for local dulcimer groups I found about 5, all of which had be defunct for years.  I hope these new resources will be kept more updated.

I was thinking Big Data is as dizzying as Big Mon .

Stephen, I only learned about Eulberg's site when I asked him if I could list the Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering on your site.  I had no idea either.

Perhaps at some point you two could indeed coordinate the two sites somehow.  And Steve E. does not include regular dulcimer groups, so perhaps the two lists can fulfill different purposes.

I recently received an unsolicited email from McSpadden checking on the details of my local group for some kind of database they are gathering.  I guess lots of folks are trying to create big data on the dulcimer world.

I just learned that Steve Eulberg maintains a list of dulcimer concerts, workshops, and festivals at Dulcimer Crossing.  The link is  https://dulcimercrossing.com/dc_events.html .

Sounds great, @Diane-R!  New strings look better, feel better, and sound better.  I know a professional guitarist who changes strings every month.  I try to do so every 3-6 months on the instruments I play regularly.  I am not sure why some people keep the same strings on for years.  They just get hard and start hurting your fingertips, as you can testify.

Dulcinina,

Someone here such as @Ken-Longfield probably knows what year McSpadden stopped using ply and started using solid wood.  That is something to take into consideration, although I think we are too afraid of plywood.  You certainly want a solid soundboard, but I've played some wonderful instruments with ply sides and back.

It's rare that McSpaddens on Ebay go for much less than $300.

That's a fine looking dulcimer, @Atilwi.  Ron Gibson has the best rosebud soundholes; they are just beautiful.  Happy strumming!

JP, I feel semi-professionally obliged to suggest that if you are indeed facing a more general feeling of malaise than merely not being inspired musically, you might want to seek expert help.  Online friends in music can only do so much.

If it is musical inspiration you seek, then perhaps we can help you.

I find that although my interest in music is pretty constant, my excitement about working on my own musicianship ebbs and flows. Sometimes I just don't have a song or technique that I want to learn or work on. I pick up my instrument and just don't know what to play.  One thing I do then--which doesn't even address the problem--is to continue playing scales and arpeggios and other exercises. In fact, I probably do more work merely on technique during the periods when I'm not inspired because I don't know what else to play and because when I am inspired, I want to play something specific.  But working on that technique means that when I do find that inspiration, I am better able to play it at a level that pleases me.

I also keep a list of "to learn" songs. When I am busy working on other stuff but discover a tune I'd like to play, I add it to a list.  Then during those periods when I'm just not feeling the inspiration, I peruse that list and sometimes a tune pops out and I rediscover what I liked about it.  If nothing pops out I sometimes force myself to start working on one of those tunes, and often once I start to "get" the tune, I also "get" what I liked about it and find my enthusiasm again.

I also keep a little file on my phone of musical ideas.  If a melody hits me as I'm leaving the grocery store, I'll record myself singing or whistling it.  A lot of that stuff never amounts to anything, but sometimes when nothing else excites me I'll listen to some of those files and find a melodic idea that I'd like to turn into a song.  It's like a repository of half-ideas that can be flushed out later on.  And when one of those half-ideas starts to become something fuller, it can be truly inspiring. 

I also seek music externally. One way to do so is to listen once again to some of the music that first inspired you.  For me, that means listening to the flatpicking guitarists who first demonstrated to me how elegant and exciting acoustic music could be: Norman Blake and Tony Rice.  But I also look for new music that I don't know yet.  Recently I've discovered the Canadian singer/banjo player Kaia Kater and the Memphis singer Valerie June.  Maybe those musicians don't speak to you.  But others will. Find them and let them reignite your inspiration.