This discussion was so delightful that I went ahead and bought the JT by Robert Schuler. Even in the audio over the web I could hear the difference. Bach owned different harpsichords - tuned to JT and ET - never thought I would be in a position to own a bespoke JT instrument so I'm really excited to be adding 155 tuning to my skill set. I'll let you know how it goes.
Scott
This may not be the best area to respond but I a firm believer in the 1-3-5 tunings. The chord possibilities are endless and you can really do some very interesting chord progressions. So D-F#-A or C-E-G or F-A-C can be a revelation. I went to conservatory and "think" in keys and chords so it seems familar to me.
All that said I recently tried D-A-A and it was - in a word - thriling! It does seem that the MD wants to have a drone that rings along with your melody.
So I guess you can have the best of both worlds tune a drone tuning for some songs - tune in a "chordal" mode when you want to do something else.
If nothing else I got over my fear of tuning my strings!
Well I yielded to temptation and bought the Dulcinet. I wanted to experiment with chromatic frets and right now these are going for around $150.
So far it is a fantastic little instrument to explore with and it seems to have a sweet tone. The chromatic frets are messing with what little fingering I had already self-taught myself. I do wish it was more "dulicimer" like. I still haven't figured out he best way to hold it. I'm thinking of putting a leather tie or some sort of strap. Any ideas or comments are welcome.
I tuned it to D-F#-A-A so now I have a fine instrument for adding chords to a jam session. I just thought maybe someone else might want to noodle around with it as well. Description below.
Dulcinet T, Rosewood, Hearts The Dulcinet™ is a very unique instrument. It is about the size of a tenor ukulele so it is small and light, easy to hold and carry around. It is strung like a dulcimer, but backwards. It has one wound string, and two other courses of lighter gauge steel strings, the bottom course is two strings tuned in unison. There are 19 chromatic frets. The scale length is roughly 430mm or 17". It can be tuned in different ways, but the sweet spot seems to be G3-D4-G4G4.
