Forum Activity for @jan-potts

Apparently my brain's starting to turn to mush.  I had some in-person business to take care of with someone and went to their house and sat in the living room with 4 other family members and not one of us were masked, nor did anyone think about wearing a mask (I had one in my purse) the hour or so that I was there.  The 4 year old went from person to person and we all loved some on their cat.  I think I had been home an hour or so before I realized what I had done.  I hadn't visited in anyone's home for most of the past year and wouldn't have gone on a social visit.  I almost never leave the house except to use drive-thrus at the bank, library, etc.  My husband does all the grocery shopping and other shopping.  Anyway, I was glad I had already gotten my first shot 3 weeks ago...I will get the second one Saturday.  

Wendell, there's a listing on Facebook market place that shows a pamphlet by Keith. Not at all sure it's 'the one', but I've not seen anything else. 

 Screenshot_20210326-214232_Facebook.jpg - 133KB

Great news Ken.

Venni: I wish you a good and speedy recovery

@ken-longfield I hope you are doing well after your second vaccine and side effects are minimal for you!   

Well, the second shot is in the arm. Two weeks from today I should be good to go although I will keep wearing a mask out in public. In two weeks our daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons will be here to visit. Can't wait for them to visit. We have a lot of planning to do for our trip out to Yellowstone N.P. in late June and early July.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

May the wind be at your back...oops, that might be impossible both ways.  Good luck!  We're getting excited, we will be eligible for our age group here in WA as of 3/31.  Soon!

Ken, be safe on your drive!  Hope all goes well with your vaccine! 

Ken, be brave and fight your way through the gusts like the true warrior you are.

I agree pretty much with Ken Hulme; especially the need to change the slots in the nut and bridge. Depending upon how sturdily built your dulcimer is will determine how well the nylon strings work. Have fun experimenting.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Venni, that's sad.  May God help you heal from this devastating illness very soon.  

In about 20 minutes I am off to receive my second vaccine shot. Can't wait, but I will have to fight strong winds and gusts on the way.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Venni, I am saddened by the news of your contracting Covid19. Best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

I have about six different house plants that I call the Elders ...I've had them for about 14 years. They are problematic to repot, either because they are large and fragile, and/or because they are cactus covered with sharp spines.

Three of the Elders I managed to repot about five years ago, and they'll be fine for a while yet before needing another repotting. But the other three had not been repotted in all those 14 years, and I really needed to stop putting it off.

Last week I bought the pots and various soil mixing ingredients I'd need to do the three plants and yesterday I spent much of the day repotting those last three big plants, with some muscle help from my husband.

The easier two Elder plants are matching "Red Chestnut" bromeliads in the living room window. They are each about 3 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall not counting their pots. They have no spines (thank goodness) but are easily damaged when moved around, and hard to hold and manipulate with all their fronds splaying out in all directions.
I managed to repot both of them thanks to the fact that they are not very heavy and also because I pruned a LOT of lower older fronds off before beginning the repot.
I found their roots were actually real small and the old soil was pretty useless. Being epiphytes, they don't actually need 'soil' per se anyway, and I set them up in some nice bark-y orchid mix in their beautiful new pots. I had them out on the lawn for this procedure, and sprayed them down with a gentle hose which removed old dust and probably hydrated them during the trauma. They do look sparser now what with my having pruned many lower leaves, but I think they'll do well once they settle into their new digs.  :)  They get watered by pouring water into their main cup 'leaf vase', not by watering the soil. But it's important the orchid mix is kept damp during the next few weeks while the plants are adjusting to the repotting stress, so their little roots don't dry up and die.

The last Elder repot job was the absolute nightmare project that I've put off for 14 years. This was the candelabra cactus (really a succulent) in our bedroom on a table by the window...that was now four feet tall and three feet wide with stiff branches all over the place and horribly painful nasty big thorns everywhere. We have some very heavy leather fireplace gloves like gauntlets, and the spines go right through those too if you don't also use a big towel. !  The other big problem was the sheer weight of the thing- in the pot the entire plant seemed to weigh about 50 pounds- I could barely heft it three inches off the table, much less carry it around.

I had a choice for this one- I could make it easier on us by drastically pruning the whole plant by a third or a half, but because the branches are all thick this would look like a real butcher job and it would kind of be a shame to ruin its spectacular look. OR, I could get my husband's help and try it without pruning. If the big branches started breaking when we manipulated it, I might have to just prune everything down anyway. 
More in the next post on how we managed to repot the huge cactus...

Venni, truly, I hope you recover and feel better soon!  

I hope you recover soon and feel better Venni. That sounds awful.

I got my 2nd shot 10 days ago, so in 4 more days I should be well protected.. such a good feeling. I can't wait to visit my vaccinated friends in person!

I did experience a very unpleasant day of side effects after the 2nd shot- felt quite sick and confined to bed for a day and a half. But it was a small price to pay, and I feel great now. 

I encourage all who use the forum to help support it.

It's really simple. If you enjoy the forum and it benefits you, you really ought to support it. A lot of things in life are note free, and the forum is not really meant to be a handout. After all we pay for other things we enjoy--groceries, pro baseball, movies, concerts, bowling, dulcimers, dulcimer festivals etc.

So sorry Venni to hear of your disease. COVID is wicked. Take care of yourself and get well soon.

We both got our second jabs more than two weeks ago.  Both through the VA.  Sally was 'first wave' as a health care worker, I was 3rd wave as a partially compromised veteran over 70.  Feeling much better about things in general.  But we will not stop mask wearing for probably another year.  We already had lots of quantitative evidence that traveling -- flying in particular -- while masked reduces contracted illness, and for the past 10 years have always flown and entrained that way.

Very sorry to hear that. Very best wishes for a speedy recovery. I‘m sure we’ll all be thinking of you.

I got my second vaccine shot this morning.  I then ordered  lunch for the family from my favorite sandwich spot (actually called The Sandwich Spot).  The joint sits across the street from a small park near a small complex for "active seniors."  In the park there were three or four groups of people without masks, all "of a certain age" as they say, picnicking together.  It occurred to me that they had probably all been vaccinated, and it was the first sign I've seen in a long time of social life getting back to normal.

Here in California, the vaccines will be available to anyone over 50 as of April 1 and anyone over 16 after April 15.  That means my wife and daughter can get vaccinated, too, so long as vaccine supplies don't run out.  Once the whole family is covered I'll feel a lot more comfortable meeting with friends I haven't seen in a long time.  

Someday we'll all be interviewed by young students doing oral histories of the "Great Pandemic of 2020" (hopefully not the "First COVID Pandemic") and they won't believe how our social lives were shut down. I never used to go to the movies too often, or go bowling, or hang out in cafes, or that kind of thing. But now I miss those experiences.

Wendell, you're right both that Ron Ewing is known for his baritones and his dulcimettes and also that you rarely see his instruments hit the used dulcimer market.  That alone tells you something about how people like them.  I know of at least one professional dulcimer player who has been playing a Ron Ewing standard dulcimer for decades.  She loves it.

@lisavb There's always the bathroom as a practice room.  Or, maybe not-- the acoustics are really good in lots of bathrooms.  

Richard, thank you so much for supporting FOTMD with your kind and thoughtful donations. 

Ron builds a great dulcimer.

I owned a couple of Ron's dulcimers over the years, a 6 string dulcimette and a standard style. Great craftsmanship, superior balanced sound, beautiful wood and very easy to work with if you want something special made. Most people really like his dulcimers and there are not many for sale. I got rid of mine simply because I chose to move to the old style traditional dulcimer with staple frets, wood tuners, and primarily 1-5-5 tuning with diatonic fretbpard without any added frets. The owner of the standard still plays it regularly as far as I know. The dulcimette was donated to a charity auction to raise money for a student scholarship to attend a major dulcimer festival.

LOL!  Working from home has been a two-edged sword.  I no longer have my commute (yay!), but if BF has a work call or is otherwise tied up with work and trying to focus after I'm done for the day, well...that can put a crimp in the ol' practice time!  No safe place to play where it won't distract him or stir the birds up to squawking.  Depending what's going on, that's where my electric guitar comes to the rescue...I plug my headphones into the amp and the strings themselves are pretty quiet.  

Will be nice when the weather improves and perhaps I can sneak outside to the deck and practice if his day is running long!

This subject comes up every few months.  You can Search here for other responses to the question.   

Here's my take:   Nylon strings seldom work well on a conventional dulcimer, as the instruments are build too heavily to respond well to the more subtle vibrations of nylon strings.  Bridge intonation position is a factor of string length relative to diameter, not string composition.  You can leave it where it is or ignore it entirely.  Action height may need to be raised as nylon strings will not be as taut.  Nut/Bridge slots may not be suitable -- too small for the larger diameters of nylon strings.   Do nothing until you actually put nylon strings on the instrument and try them for awhile.

Hello all I have been wanting to try putting nylon strings on my dulcimer just to see how it sounds. What I am wondering is whether nylon strings need different intonation and bridge placement than steel strings. Can I simply leave the bridge in the same place, or will I need to adjust it? Will I need a different action height? Are there other complications that I should be wary of? Thanks for any input :)

-Nate

Hi everyone. I own one of Ron Ewing’s fantastic dulcimer capos and recently saw that he has made over 1,700 dulcimers. Out of curiosity, I started looking around and find few You Tube videos and none for sale used that I could find. I would enjoy hearing from those of you who own or have played Ron’s dulcimers. I know he’s famous for his baritones and dulcimettes but I am curious about his standard size. Thanks!

@Marg , thank you so much for your very kind site donation to support FOTMD! 

@lisavb Strum quietly at 7:50.  :)

Oh, no, can't play before bedtime.  We have birds, and they are in bed by 8pm, so playing after 8 is not an option.  :)

Found the right button to start a new topic. Thanks. You might come to regret it!

Oh, @lisavb, she needs you just a few minutes before bedtime, at least.  :)

She is such a joy to hold--I knew you all would understand!!!  Yeah, yesterday was one of those days I couldn't get to her--likely same today, unfortunately.  Bet she is sitting there, getting crabby!  LOL!  

No need to apologize, @rojo.  There are lots of nooks and crannies here at FOTMD and it might not be obvious which is the best one. The overall goal is for our conversations to be usable and searchable months and years from now.  So you might imagine someone joining in a year with a question such as yours. Where would they look for information?

Apologies.  I'll get to grips with the site shortly, hopefully.

As a complement, for those interested in further information about the balouch banjo, i recommend the reading of the following article by Jean During.

Jean During is a musician and ethnomusicologist who spent 9 years in Iran. He is a reference for his work and knowledge of  sufi and extatic music in central Asia. By the way he quotes Ulrich in the side notes.

4-01.-Article-NEMO-n°3-4-Jean-During-STS_compressed.pdf - 567KB

@rojo, you might want to pose these kinds of questions in the Dulcimer Making Group , where builders discuss their work.  Here in this more general forum there are lots of folks like me for whom instrument construction is no more familiar than ancient Greek.  Make sure you "join" the group first so you can see all the conversations already there, but then feel free to start a conversation specific to your question.

Thanks.

I'm messing on with the fret board at the moment.I've gone for hollow but deliberating as weather to open up the sound board or not.

Any advice gratefully received.

rob.