Haha I found the misunderstanding about 'missing frets' amusing. Surely you guys must be aware that a truly traditional dulcimer only has 3 frets to an octave.
This was increased to 7 during an early surge in popularity known as the "vival" hundreds of years before the 1.5 and 6.5 were later also added during a period called the "re-vival." 
My cat is very indifferent to the dulcimer, but gets very concerned when I play the harmonica and hates when I play the pennywhistle. More than anything, I think he doesnt like that my dulcimer occupies my lap when he wishes he did.
"Folk music is high-class music. There's a lotta low-class people singin' it. Matter of fact, most so-called folk singers don't even look like folk." -Abner Jay
When I'm making a long slide with my thumb, I often pluck the string partway through the slide. Sometimes at half the distance I'm sliding to, sometimes wherever it fits into the rhythm nicely, sometimes to emphasize a specific not along the way.
I dont know much, but from my experience, moving the noter across the frets as fast as possible makes the note noticeably more pronounced than moving it slower, when you are hitting each fret along the way. I think one technique tries to give the intermittent slide where each fret along the way is heard as it slides into the next, while another technique tries to slide along the string without touching the frets for a more consistent sliding tone. I feel that denser noter material allows the sliding to be heard better. For example, a delicate touch passing over the frets using an actual glass slide or ceramic slide seems to be the loudest for me. When pressing down to 'bump' each fret along the way, I prefer to use a dense piece of wood hitting each fret hard to excite the string. I also will sometimes pluck the string mid slide, or will lift off and hammer down with the noter to accent the note I'm ending on.
Hope this was useful
Nate
By my generation, popeye and similar cartoons didnt even play on boomerang. The full collection of betty boop, woody woodpecker, sailor mickey, wile e coyote, popeye, etc were DVDs at the dollar store.
Lol john it does in fact make you strong to the finish. I was told once that the decimal point was misplaced on a study about the iron content of spinach, thus it was considered a miracle food with 100x the iron it actually had. Personally, I like it with some ricotta, or in a buttered curry with some squash and chicken!
Haha, Gordon, we ate a lot of spinach and poke in Arkansas, but never without sweating it down in some lard or bacon grease. They dont call it soul food cause it's good for the body!
Strumelia, the strange thing I've noticed is that my generation will gladly watch a 5 hour video as long as its divided into 20 parts.
In truth I definitely did imagine a tiktok style video telling three minutes of dulcimer history, with a part 2 and 3 and an endless stream of new minutes, since as you said, there is a LOT to cover.
Short condensed videos could help to reach a much broader audience, the way a magazine once could. I know it has been said a lot of times, but I think a dulcimer could easily replace the ukulele as the definitive beginner-friendly instrument for folk music/singer-songwriter music.
I value DPN as it is quite a lot. It is a deep, deep well of information at this point. I wouldn't want to lose that just to make the content more digestible, but if there were a high quality source of digestible excerpts about dulcimer content a la an Instagram video, I suspect that would really help dulcimer to become more culturally relevant. Again, I feel the instrument has so much potential that it blows my mind it's not more popular.
PS, I hope you are right that people who value self subsistence and traditional skills will help to revive the dulcimer, the typewriter and vinyl people I could take or leave. Lol
Nate
Wow Ken, I'm envious! Sounds like you've put them to about every use under the sun. My grandfather had a few mango trees on his farm and they always seemed to grow more than the whole family plus the neighbors could use!
To the conversation about getting young people to engage, I myself am a young person (just turned 24) and I think it would be a huge challenge to get the broader audience of young people to read any sort of printed magazine, digital or physical. Most young people prefer short videos to written text. If dulcimer had an ambassador who could output short vlog style videos showing techniques, styles, tips, history, design, players etc, that would probably be the best bet. It would be a massive undertaking for DPN or anyone else, and probably wouldn't end up worth the time.
Whenever I clean up, the couch becomes the temporary home of what I affectionately refer to as "the hoarde" as they are a horde I've hoarded. haha
@nate the gap is not rough. I need to give this poor baby a good cleaning. Did you check out the last three closeup photos I sent? Also if you look at the photo of the whole top attached to my initial post you can see little scroll cutouts on either side of the tail-there has been no separation of the tail at those spots.
I also noticed that the 'f holes' that run along the edges of the fingerboard terminate at big round holes on the side pieces. Does anyone know anything about this?
I hadnt heard of this 'floating bridge' concept until just now. I was able to find this older FOTMD post about a 'howie mitchell floating bridge'
https://fotmd.com/forums/forum/instruments-discuss-specific-features-luthiers-instrument-problems-questions/35304/dulcimer-queries
So now I understand a bit better what I'm looking at with this dulcimer, and I am very curious if it's better. I have recently been really interested in how anchoring the strings in different ways and places affects tone.
I am a bit confused. Visually, to me the gap between the tailpiece and the box looks very jagged and rough, like when glued surfaces get pulled apart. It also looks like there is some residual glue visible in the pictures, but that might just be dust and lighting. There is a chewed up little ding on the corner where I assumed they would connect, which I assumed is what split them.
The more I look at it the more I wonder if the dulcimer was intended to be hung on a rod. The headstock almost resembles a clothes hanger hook. I doubt well ever know, but I do like the idea of the builder having rows of their creations across a wall.
@ken-hulme I cant help but wonder what the intention was, since I'd Imagine it took some effort to do. Then again, maybe the piece of wood that became the headstock was originally cut for something else, and the maker repurposed it. Ive done that with furniture pieces a couple times with some strange looks.
@dwain-wilder Am I understanding you correctly that you are saying the string pins should be mounted to the tailpiece like in this drawing, so to not apply upward force to the break?
thanks,
Nate
I find the headstock really interesting. The shape of the cutout seems very specific, as if it was for a purpose. I cant imagine it would be much good for hanging the dulcimer as the notch seems really shallow. Maybe it was for hanging one specifically on a shaker peg or something like that? Also, I see a knob at the bottom for a strap, but none at the top. Anyone have any ideas? Is that type of cutout on other dulcimers as well?
I set up my 4 string dulcimers so that the inner-most of the two melody strings is equidistant with the middle and bass, and the outermost has the same distance to the edge of the fretboard as the bass string. On a 1.5" fretboard this is usually
7/32" | 1/16" | 1/2" | 1/2" | 7/32" with the lines representing strings.
For what it's worth, removing the outer string can put you further from the ends of the fretboard, but removing the inner string can give your thumbtip slightly more space on the melody without touching the middle string. It really doesn't matter much, unless youre like me and not very precise while playing.
I think Dusty pretty well nails it. If you can't reach the chord, the tone is irrelevant. Tone can be altered in many ways that are independent of VSL. All the dulcimers I make have a 25" VSL. My basses and baritones have a very rich tone with plenty of overtones. I attribute that to the fact that my tops do not contact the neck and all my dulcimers have an inner or double back. You are certainly not afraid to think outside the traditional design and building constraints, so I think you can get the best of both worlds with a little experimentation. I have also made solid body electric micro basses with VSL's in the 23" range that sounded pretty acceptable.
With the use of electronics, virtually any sound is possible at any reasonable VSL. My latest smart dulcimer has an "octaver" effect that puts in overtones up to a full octave above or below the note you are playing. Plus eleven other effects to alter the basic sound.
Well whatever his question was, probably at least one person has answered it by now haha
Ah! I just looked up the term "fret scale chart" and see that it is a chart showing the pitch generated at each fret position for each string. That is easy to do with an instrument with a standard string tuning schema, such as the guitar's EADGBE.
The dulcimer is an entirely different instrument in several ways:
So the fret scale chart for a string tuned to D5 would be DFGABCD (the fret pattern of an Appalachian dulcimer is in Mixolydian mode, meaning that the 'black' keys fall between the 2nd-3rd frets,
I believe he is referring to the 1.5 and 4.5 frets, the 1.5 I think is the minor pentatonic blue note in D, both allow for the melody string to play a d minor scale, the .5 fret also helps with minor scale chords
Are you asking for a list of fret measurements for chromatic frets? The stew mac calculator can be set to 'electric guitar' and will then show placement for all 12 frets in an octave.
Are you asking for a chart which shows scale degrees and how to fret them? I am not aware of one for chromatic, but this chart has the diatonic frets and you could add onto this yourself.
https://everythingdulcimer.com/tab/chord_chart_dad_major.pdf
For every fret that is not included on this chart, you can identify it's note, then identify the notes of the other frets you are playing and with a chart like this
https://www.michael-thomas.com/music/class/chords_notesinchords.htm
you can determine what chords you are making with these frets. So whichever frets you have, I promise it's a pretty quick process to transcribe your fretboard into a chart of scale degrees in various keys or letter notes.
I saw my first hammered dulcimer in a 1972 issue of Singout magazine. I went back and read it again only to get lost in all the other great stories from folks long gone and others now very old. It gave no history just a how to build our own for $5.
I can't add anything about its origins but I did build one 17 years ago. I keep it in my dining room always handy to play whenever I pass by...Robert
Those are really interesting details Dulcidom. I didn't mean to suggest that dulcimers were named after hammered dulcimers during the folk revival, I have just observed that the communities of fretted and hammered dulcimer players seem to maybe have become interwoven around that time. It makes some sense to me that many uncommon folk instruments would end up falling under that culture (zithers, wood flutes, etc)
Nate, it's not a dumb question at all, and I've wondered about it myself. The historical origins of the two instruments are completely different. The techniques of playing the two instruments are completely different. So what, other than the name, brings them together?
In terms of instrument design, both are types of zithers. So there's that.
But I think the more important similarity is that both are traditionally diatonic. Yes, MD players like myself have added extra frets to get chromatic notes, and many professional HD players play modern instruments with chromatic notes added as well. But traditionally, both instruments were mainly diatonic.
Seems that Cello pegs or a good wrench are both way better options than making my own. Thanks
Nate
This question might be really dumb but I've been wondering this for years. What is the cultural link between hammered dulcimers and mountain dulcimers? To me the instruments couldn't possibly have much less in common. Their 'sweet sound' namesake seems to be the only thing. From what I have heard in the past, hammered dulcimers are hundreds of years older, and it's mostly a coincidence that mountain dulcimers are called the same name.So why is there such a noticeable cultural overlap between hammered dulcimer people and mountain dulcimer people? Shops that build both or sell both, MD groups with a HD player, or vice versa. Even here on this website are a bunch of pictures by MD builders of gorgeous hammered dulcimers they have built. I feel out of the loop haha.
Thanks
Nate
Thanks for the info. I have seen some chinese ones on ebay for 15 dollars each for the reamer or shaver, a couple times less. I assume theyre less precisely made or less durable than nice ones. Still, if premade pegs only cost 1.50 that would take a lot of pegs to be worth getting the kit. The main reason I might want to make my own is that I find pegs with a very large flat head to be much more comfortable than the smaller ones on a violin.
Nate
What do y'all think of the pencil sharpeners designed for friction pegs? Are these a good method for creating tuners, or just an artetfact of a tradition?
Thanks for the information! I was hoping that's what you guys would say 
. I am pretty curious what strings that old might sound like, hopefully they don't just snap. Unfortunately, during the original assembly by the person who gave it to my friend, the boards were reduced to smaller sizes than the instructions directed, as he just glued the parts together then sawed off the excess. so if will not be possible to assemble according to the directions, however this should only affect the precision of the box and hopefully it will still sound good. This definitely seems to be a dulcimer kit that has only passed through the hands of people who really didn't care one way or the other about woodwork or the instrument, and sadly I might have overlooked it a bit too long as well.
Nate
Hello folks, a couple of years ago a friend gave me a half assembled kit dulcimer along with an instructional booklet, as well as"four & twenty" and a plastic sleeve with some strings. The booklet is made by The Dulcimer Shoppe and the strings are McSpadden brand, so the kit might be as well, but I can't say for sure. It was given to my with some of the work already done wrong, my friend tried to fix it without consulting the booklet,
made it even weirder, gave up, and then had it sitting around for years until he found out I play dulcimer so he dug it up to give to me. Between some of the original pieces being lost, and the things done wrong, I still haven't gotten around to putting it together.
I'm hoping some folks here might know more about this kit and maybe just how old some of this stuff is. I cant tell if the books are just stylized to look late 70s folky or if it all might actually be that old. My friend indicated that it could be decades old, but he really had no clue beyond that.
Thanks
Nate
My experience with the dulcimer community on this website is a very altruistic desire to share information and music. So many on here have taken quite a lot of time out of their day to write long posts to help me or someone else or folks in general with understanding and appreciating the dulcimer, and I'm really grateful for that. At the end of the day I know that all the help I've gotten is proof that dulcimer people love helping and sharing with others, so I know they will always find a way to do it
I am not a regular reader, but I've pulled up a TON of random articles over time. Sorry is this question is out of the loop, but will there be any type of replacement, maybe a less frequent digital newsletter or something more manageable? It's a real bummer though, for someone like me who isnt really connected to the culture of dulcimer playing, DPN regularly exposed me to ideas I'd never have even known to look for, including techniques, historical information, etc.
Hey Ken, I thought the instrument was super interesting, especially how the traditional ones have handles on the front, so you can basically hold it like a plane yoke while you play. My next one will too. The one I built has the saddle sitting on two coffee cans in a plywood box. I sort of just winged it, didn't really measure anything or use plans or whatnot. Intending to build another one now that I know what to expect.
