Forum Activity for @frank-dudgeon

That was marvelous. Thank you so much. You have a very talented niece!

You, my friend, are the inspiration! After your query, I did a search as well, finding that no one is making them any longer.....So being the struggling mercenary....I hope to make my fortune.....

That is beautiful Robin.

Thank you very much for your response John. I have already received a Hall from fearless leader Dusty in exchange for a donation to the forum. Yours look great as well.

That's really beautiful, @robin-thompson.  Although I would not recognize the melody as one of yours, I can hear your delicate slides certainly.  Your niece is quite talented.  Hopefully you can forgive her for going to Indiana for school.  

Can't find the right words this morning......a few tears though. [in the good way]...Thank you.

@steve-c She grew up in SW OH!  (Music degrees, though, from Ohio and Butler universities.) 

Beautiful Robin! Just beautiful, your niece has mad cello skills!

One of our nieces is a cellist and, by my request, learned one of our mountain dulcimer/guitar duo tunes to play on cello.  

https://youtu.be/9jYjwBuUt3E?si=Vu3ZzkW_gsNDMgmV

Pettreemusic.com  has them in stock. Not the "hall" brand however. I did speak to Jenn over at Crystal flutes...they "may" in the future start making theirs again. The are more concentrated on the flutes at this time.

Hey Dusty, Thanks I did try to do a search and came up with nothing, but I'll try your link.

Although it's been dormant for some time, the 6-String Dulcimers Group here still has a lot of members.  Perhaps you could join that group and resurrect a discussion or two on what those instruments offer.

Remember that you have to join the group to be able to see all the content.

Sorry i Wally i mistyped that

Except that mine is Dd-Aa-aa (or maybe dD-aA-aa, or aa-Aa-Dd if you prefer the reverse order)

Thats similar to my favorite setup for 6 string Wally. dd-Aa- Dd

Or like an "unreal Dulcimer." On my 6-string dulcimer, tuned in DAA with 6+ fret, I have a wound string in the middle pair tuned an octave below normal and a high D on the "bass" pair. This gives a more rich sound to the drones, and not like a mandolin.

I also like the sound of 3-string DAA noter-drone cardboard instruments.

As John and others say, depends on what you like and the mood you are in.

Depends on if you want it to sound like a mandolin or a "real" dulcimer.

Just liken it to a 12 string guitar vs. a six string. I will say different but not better.

Hey John.  I have a Ron Ewing baritone dulcimette made with 6 strings in three courses. Basically, each string is doubled.  I love the sound.  I has the pop of a good mandolin.  And it was great for strumming tunes, meaning tunes that involve a lot of just strumming across all the strings.  One day I restrung it without each of the double strings, so it was just a 3-stringed dulcimer.  That was about 10 years ago, and I have never gone back.  Without the double strings it is just much easier to play more nuanced music, sometimes picking a single string instead of strumming all the time.  And certain techniques such as bending strings or even just adding some vibrato are simply not possible with the double strings.

I guess that story is evidence that I prefer 3 strings to 6.  However, that double string dulcimer sounded great for certain tunes.  I think my playing has just gravitated to a different style.

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.

So, I was afraid to modify my dulcimer and just jammed a KNA AP-2 onto mine. It's been fairly decent. I even got to use it in my regular jam session today rather than my normal flute or tin whistle.

The one caveat is that it was a smaller group, I still have no idea how it will work when we have a full compliment of guitars plus drums (I'm guessing poorly with my concerns from the OP), but I'm happy so far.

Hi kids, just Jon Lilley here from cyberspace. I was hoping to get people's ideas and thoughts on something that I have no idea about. Never seen one, never touched one, never played one. It has to do with the five string and the sixth string dulcimers.  What are your opinions and thoughts about that? It's too hard to play, love it, hate them,  why bother. Well that's it, I was just hoping someone would give me their two cents. thanks. 

Thanks Dan!

And thanks Ken for the suggestions on the instruction books, and the tip on the DAA scale. I'll check out those books!

Since the recommendation is to play in the DAA tuning I looked through my library of dulcimer instruction books. Some early MelBay books like Fun with the Dulcimer and Cripple Creek Dulcimer are good places to start. Another book that has lots of familiar tunes is this one: The Best Dulcimer Method - Yet! Those books can get you started. The DAA scale begins on the 3rd fret. The 10th fret is the octave of the third fret. Knowing that you should be able to start picking out some simple tunes.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Well done!

Thanks Richard!
And thanks, Strumelia, for your P.S below...just saw it...I will post the video. Thanks for the suggestion and invitation!

Beautiful work. What a nice traditional sound. Thanks for sharing.

Ha! Thanks Strumelia! While I was composing that last message, you beat me to it! Thanks so much for all the great suggestions for instructional resources. I look forward to diving in to them!

Thanks, Strumelia...I appreciate all of your advice and ideas that helped me get there. The last few years of developing my post-retirement hobby of building guitars, and restoring/repairing a variety of other (sometimes oddball!) stringed instruments (banjolele, autoharp, Tranjo, Weissenborn guitar, etc.), and having a shop and materials with which to do so, certainly came in handy. But finding this community was the key to this project!
As I just asked Ken, any suggestions for instructional materials would be welcome!

Robert, I'm sure you'll get some good tips on instruction books. You may also enjoy browsing through my free blog specifically for beginner noter/drone style players. It includes lots of tips for improving strumming and rhythm, over 30 easy tabs for traditional songs, and help in understanding how to retune and play on the various common modes. DAA (the D being the low bass string) is in my opinion the best tuning to start playing in for those dulcimer players who fret only the melody string.

Here's a selection of blog posts on beginners: https://dulcimer-noter-drone.blogspot.com/search/label/beginner
And some of my posts with free tab: https://dulcimer-noter-drone.blogspot.com/search/label/noter-drone%20TAB

P.S. I'd love for you to post your video among our main video section for all to enjoy more prominently in the future here on fotmd (in addition to it being within this thread)... you just add it from your profile page to 'videos'.. look for a plus sign+ to add a video and description.

Thanks Ken...your input made all the difference. Now if you can recommend some good instruction books (or other resources) for beginners, I'll learn how to play this thing!

Oh my, I am so very impressed with the beautiful job you did in bringing that poor dulcimer back to its former 'glory'.  It is indeed glorious!  What a mess that peghead was, i really can't believe how well you repaired and restored this instrument.    And it sounds just lovely!

Robert, you did a fantastic job on restoring your Arthur Dixon dulcimer. It has that original mountain sound that I like so much. Thanks for sharing the video. I'm glad that you found us here and that we could offer some helpful advice.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

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

Very nice! Congratulations.

Hello all. I'm pleased to report back to you...finally...success!
I basically followed all of your advice about the string height issue, remaking the bridge, etc., and I've strung it up, tuned it up, and it's sounding (and looking) pretty great to me! I'm very pleased with how it turned out. The action is still a little high, but still seems pretty playable to me, and the intonation is surprisingly good. Even the tuning pegs seem to be keeping it in tune, at least for now (it took a lot of futzing with them, but I finally got them working pretty well). See attached photos...I also made a little video of me telling about the dulcimer & it's restoration, and even me playing it a little bit so you can see what it sounds like. Here's the link to that:

 IMG_2312.jpg - 156KB

Yes, that makes sense. You need to make the touch point of the string on the bridge just a little higher than the tail so that the string is vibrating from the bridge and not the tail piece. So you are right that you will need to make a new bridge.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Thanks Ken. That's helpful. I'm thinking that before modifying the original wood on the tail end of the dulcimer, I may just try and string it up with all three strings up to pitch, and play it some, and see how it does. But I assume that in order to even do that I will need to replace the bridge that's now too low for the strings to even touch...right? I guess I can replace it with a bridge high enough so the strings just barely break over it (including some minimal slots). Does that make sense?

I worked on a dulcimer that has a similar problem. When I put the straight edge on the top of the fret (these were regular frets across the whole fret board) I discovered that the section after the strum hollow to the tail was 1/4 inch higher that the rest of the fret board. That back was perfectly flat. I trimmed off that quarter inch, cut a new slot for the bridge, the slots for the strings, etc. and wound up with a great playing dulcimer for the customer. You never know what idiosyncrasies you'll find on some of the these instruments. I'm not suggesting that this is your problem. You noted that the tail piece on your dulcimer is higher than the fret board so you would either need to trim it down level or live with higher action. The question is do you want to live with the historical value of the Dixon dulcimer or would you rather have a dulcimer that can be played finger picking style rather than noter style. I've found that many older dulcimers have higher action, not just for noter style playing, but also the maker doesn't have to level the frets that way.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."