Forum Activity for @nate

I have made them a couple different ways. I made one with six courses tuned DADf#ad and it sounded awesome but the melody was at times getting drowned out by the lower notes. Im not quite good enough to make full use of all 6 strings. Ive also made one that had six stings in three courses of two strings each. It sounded great but was really difficult to play. I think it would have been really good for noter drone style.

Apologies Robert, I accidentally deleted it while trying to edit it. Thank you for reposting it 

With that said though, I think it's best to simply start with the nut and bridge too tall, and then slowly bring them lower until you get the feel you like, with the range of 0.3mm to 0.8mm between the bottom of the string and the top of the crown of the first fret being a general guideline

Robert that is correct. Using a dime is most effective on instruments with mandolin fretwire. I use jumbo fretwire, which has a crown height that is actually taller than the thickness of a dime. Its a useful trick to avoid needing gauges, but  cant be done with taller fret crowns. the actual distance between the crown of the first fret and the bottom of the string could be as low as 0.3 mm and as high as 0.8mm. If you're planning on playing your instrument at a lower string tension, you may want to consider around 0.5-0.6 mm 

Since apparently amplification isn't allowed, you may want to consider a particularly loud dulcimer. Some dulcimers are quite a bit louder than others. There are a lot of options depending on what kind of tone you prefer. In general, larger dulcimers that can support heavier strings will often be a lot louder than smaller instruments, however if you are looking for something portable, you may need to compromise. 

On one hand, if you particularly wanted to install a "zero fret" made of metal that is an option. Common materials for dulcimer nut and bridge are very hard woods, bone, and plastic.

For the pegs, others might be able to provide insight,  but pegs of standard sizes are super cheap and "peg hole reamers" as well as "peg shavers" might be useful tools to use

It reminds me of the saying "If you do what you know then you'll know what youre doing."

Perhaps this concept was more familiar to the person who installed these tuners so its what they opted for. More than once ive seen people fix instruments in strange ways because it was their first instinct.

I cant imagine what exactly was going through their mind, but it would make sense to me if someone was "winging it."

Thank you, I appreciate it John!

With that said, I have to admit Ive seen a ton of folks use baking pans for resonators on other instruments and i just started slapping them on dulcimers. Id like to think ive seen a lot of string instruments, but using solder instead of screws is definitely a first for me

Ken if i am understanding correctly, there are no screws. After the machine tuners were placed in the peg box, a metal rod was installed spanning from the scroll to the bridge on both sides of the actual tuning cylinder, and the mounting plate ot the tuners were then soldered to the rods.

I might be misunderstanding, the whole thing is just such a head scratcher to me

Soldering tuners into a metal cage gives new meaning to the phrase "locking tuners" LOL

Wow thats the most bizarre system for anchoring tuning pegs that ive ever seen. Is this a method others have seen before?

Thank you for taking the time to articulate your results dulcidom! I have been playing around with these ideas quite a bit. I have a one string dulcimer that i have tuned to exactly 100 Hz and a weighted pendulum that i have been moving down the length of the string and then observing the results in a spectrum analysis software. One observation is that on an instrument like a dulcimer, the overtones that sustain are not always the overtones with the sharpest attack. If one were to look at peak amplitude of frequencies immediately after the "attack" i have found them to be different from the ones that sustain the longest. 

Specifically with the language of tinny, My first guess would be that the strings are not seated correctly in either their slots at the bridge, or their slots at the nut.

Upon first glance at the positive thread, it seems the conversation started with Dusty suggesting that there ought to be a national dulcimer day, as there is a national guitar day, which was quickly expanded by community feedback into international Appalachian dulcimer day. Is that a fair summation?

Hey folks I'd love some clarity about the exact nature of the origins. It seems to me that the discussion in the positive thread started when @dusty brought it up 4 years ago, and this thread was started 3 years ago, but others are saying the holiday is 5 years old. Did this all start with Dusty's suggestion of having a National Dulcimer Day in the positive thread?

Personally Dusty, as someone who has struggled from a lack of definitive information on many dulcimer topics, I'd love for you to put it in black letters

Unfortunately, my IADD video has been postponed too long to matter :(. Lesson learned, and next year i will make a point to prepare a video ahead of time so that its already ready on IADD

For what its worth, I have used one of those under bridge pickups that i took off an electric acoustic guitar and put it on a dulcimer, and did not trim the excess of the braided wire, but instead just drilled a small hole at the edge of the fretboard under the bridge for the excess wire to be tucked into. It sounds great and in the future i might be glad i kept the bit of extra length

Really well said John.  
I commend and thank you for contributing to the scientific understanding of string physics. The words may be subjective, but this thread has compelled me to try to understand the "objective" side of tone a little more.

This topic has got me doing a lot of research and really appreciating how far beyond me most of this stuff is to try to wrap my head around. After a few hours playing around in an audio spectrum visualizer, Im really starting to appreciate just how unreliable my ear is.

Such fascinating stuff 

I think overtones are associated with our perception of depth. An example of an instrument with almost no overtones is a tuning fork, and an example of an instrument with many pronounced overtones is a cello. 


I also think what Dusty mentioned about the string being floppier near the middle may be the main reason that the tone is so different near the middle of the string. I have noticed that the actual pitch of the string wobbles a lot more when I pluck near the middle. Though very unscientific, I just plucked my string as hard as I could right at the bridge and noted that the frequency wobbled in a range of 1 cent. I plucked as hard as I could at the middle of the string and found that it wobbled in a range of about 4 cents. Since the actual string is producing a larger range of frequencies when plucked at the middle, this might be another factor for why the tone is "warmer" near the midpoint of the string.

I've been wondering a lot about this stuff for a while. I think today is the day I make string striking pendulum and start experimenting!

Thank you for taking the time to explain John. I have to admit, I find the results counterintuitive. If a "purer" tone means less overtones, and an instrument like a flute is an example of a very pure tone with few overtones,  it seems to me that I get a "purer" tone while plucking near the end of the string than I do close to the middle.

I've heard it said that the closer to the midpoint, the more freely the string can excite overtone frequencies. The way it was explained to me is that when the string is divided into two lengths on either side of your plectrum, whichever length is shorter will limit the overtones of the longer one, and therefore the greater the difference between the two lengths, the more the fundamental is emphasized, whereas the closer the two lengths are to equal, the more overtones are emphasized.

Doubling the octave (7th fret) is a good way to estimate where to start from, but on an instrument that small he will need a lot more fine adjustment to the bridge beyond that.

While I agree with your sentiment of not overthinking it, Matt, a micro dulcimer does warrant extra consideration.
We don't even know his VSL or what he considers "standard" so surely some complication is required.

Indeed it is Robin! I just got my first three aquavina dulcimers back! At various times I have given them away to people, but today, after offering various people newer and better dulcimers in exchange to get the old ones back, I now have the prototype, the beta test, and the alpha test, and im looking forward making a quick video of the three!

Congratulations, that's awesome. Since I likely wouldn't be able to interpret the paper even if I could access it,(math and I are like nodes and anti nodes ) are there any insights you could share about the ideal place to strum, based on your findings?

1) If you were to use normal strings, you would want to tune them higher than normal. If you were to tune the strings normally on an instrument that is too short, the strings won't have enough tension, resulting in a floppy feel and a weaker sound. A common tuning for short scale dulcimers using normal strings is to tune up from D to G. This would be Gdd or Gdg, rather than Daa or Dad, but you may need to tune it even higher.

2) if you want to play in standard tuning, you will need strings of a heavier gauge than normal.

3) This is a bit more complicated of a topic that may require more nuanced explanation, but this is the process that I personally use:
First, measure the distance between the nut and the 7th fret. The VSL is exactly double that distance, before adjusting for intonation. Make a temporary mark at this distance for your "estimated" bridge placement.
Next you will need to cut your bridge to the correct height. The correct height can be determined using the "nickel and dime" method, which is explained in other threads on this website.
String up the instrument, place the bridge at the 'estimated' correct distance, and tune up the strings. Tune the string up until it is perfectly in tune with the target note, then pluck the string at the 7th fret and note whether the "octave note" is sharp or flat. If the octave note is flat when the root note is perfectly in tune, the bridge needs to be moved slightly closer to the nut. If the octave note is sharp when the root note is perfectly in tune, the bridge needs to be moved slightly farther from the nut.
Detune the strings, adjust the bridge slightly, then tune back up and check again. When all three strings are perfectly in tune at the root note, and perfectly in tune at the octave fret (or as close as you can reasonably get it) the bridge is now in it's correct placement.

I like this bridge design, and the type of sound they seem to produce. A bit less nasally than a bridge sitting on the fingerboard, and less round than a bridge on the soundboard. I've built a couple bridges like this, and I just wish I saw this one beforehand, because it would have saved me some time on the drawing board lol.

The nut and headstock are also very cool.

I fully agree @dusty . I couldn't help but laugh at the idea of an AI bot reading MY post and then giving me misleading information about my own instrument

Dusty, I've heard a lot of good feedback about Feed-N-Wax. I asked because I happened to already have this can of furniture polish, and was hoping to find a use for it. I have used it a few times on my dulcimers, and the orange oil does a good job at keeping the wood vitalized, for lack of a better word.

Thank you very much Ken for this comprehensive answer. The Horstobel Sachs system has always been hard for me to wrap my head around, but what you typed is super easy to grasp. Would any discontinuous fretboard then be considered a lute? 

It's hard to differentiate the concept of a dulcimer from its fretboard and string layout. A three course instrument with a paired melody course and two accompanying courses in the same key is such a powerful concept that it gets applied to all kinds of different resonators. 
On the topic of lutes and zithers, I am wondering how this system reconciles something like a discontinuous fingerboard which terminates before the bridge, or a dulcimer with a fingerboard that extends beyond the box. Is the following photo a lute or zither?

Unfortunately, since I live in Southern Oregon, my local library has been ruined by the anti homeless measures, and will probably never recover. Most of the libraries in my area have been totally stripped of funding and local support in order to make the area more hostile to homeless people.

Northern California has a terrific dulcimer community, with plentiful old hippies who love the instrument. I especially loved the section on "counterculture."

Wow there are some pretty skilled musicians showcasing those instruments

I think that any effort to directly compare different VSLs would be a compromise of all kinds of other features that probably affect tone far more than VSL. While the original question specifically asked about scale length, there is also the broader question of how tone, volume, and sustain are affected by a physically larger instrument. I think in general dulcimers with long VSLs tend to often have larger soundboards, are often taller, are often sturdier and can handle more tension, and are often tuned lower. The many other factors that come along with a long VSL can affect the tone more than the VSL itself.