Forum Activity for @strumelia

Keeping my fingers crossed for you as well! 

I love my Keith Young limberjack dearly.  I hope yours make the safe journey home to you for a happy dance reunion. 

That's good news! I hope your lumberjacks are in there. Best wishes.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Thanks, everyone, for all the suggestions.  We are told our suitcase has been found, and we should get it tomorrow, so hopefully, we will have our limberjacks back!

Some years ago I bought a limberjack from Keith Young and another (more expensive one) in the shape of a dog from someone on Etsy.  As Ken says, there are several sellers on Etsy, but the search engine there keeps changing "limberjack" to "lumberjack," so you might do a Google search for "limberjack on Etsy" or something like that.

I doubt that you will find any lumberjacks made by Keith Young available anymore. If you do an internet search for "Limberjack" there a lots of sites that pop up. There are many folks on Etsy that sell them.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

We had two limberajcks (a man and a woman) made by Keith Young, which we used in our school music performances.  Unfortunately, the airline lost our suitcase, and both are gone.  We would like to replace them.  Does anyone know of any by Keith Young or anything similar that we could order?

 Limberjack 1.jpg - 8KB

Thanks Strumelia! You are a fabulous source of knowledge for many things!

blackdogbess, Barb

Follow simple instructions to see which apps currently on your Mac are 32 bit and will not function in Catalina:   https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/macos-find-32-bit-apps/

@black-dog-bess : keep your eye on this Webroot support forum thread: https://community.webroot.com/webroot-secureanywhere-for-macs-18/product-update-webroot-secureanywhere-for-macos-catalina-340620
It looks as though you might have a Catalina-compatible Webroot version available by mid November.  You should be able to get your remaining paid subscription applied when you update your WR version.

Good advice! I lost my antivirus programs to Catalina. I could not open Webroot which was supplied with the new Mac I bought from Best Buy. I thought, oh well, back to Norton but Norton products are incompatible too! Thank goodness Clean My Mac has some protective features. I think what surprised me is that these programs are well known, how could Apple have gone ahead with it's upgrade without even thinking about compatibility with the rest of the world? 

Barb

Thanks for your interesting comments. If it happens again I will try just loosening and re-seating the string before I replace it.

patty

New strings can often be the best, quick fix. So happy for you. I had a dulcimer that I had put new strings on that I love on another dulcimer. When I played it, it had lost all life...it sounded muted and lifeless. I love the strings on my other dulcimer. So, I changed strings to a different type and tada, it had it's life back. For whatever reason, that dulcimer just doesn't like those strings. Lesson learned.

Well, it's that time again...  doing the vegetable garden cleanup.  Piles and piles of pulled wilted dead plants, rotten tomatoes, weeds, etc.  Heaped on tarps and then we haul them into the woods to a big ditch across the road.  So much less fun than the beginning of the garden season.
Nice to get things cleaned up in the Fall though. Way worse if you wait til Spring, because then the ground's all muddy and half frozen when you're trying to pull out dead plants and clean things up for planting.  In the Fall the ground is still dry and fluffy- easier to pull out the plants!  Then I'll rake things up a bit and lay down thick straw over the beds for the winter.

Amazing, I still got a couple of nice big red peppers today... probably the last before the plants frost and die.

I've made two blueberry cobblers this week with blueberries I froze in July.  :D  I still have enough in the freezer for about 5 more cobblers... for special occasions I think.

The bees are slowing down. Time to put the mouse guards on the hive entrances and insulate the tops for the winter.

Glad that worked out for you.  One thing to look at if something like that happens again, it to make sure that the string(s) are firmly and correctly seated in the notches.  Sometimes a "violent' strum can dislodge a string minutely, giving rise to those kinds of issues...

I just ran into this problem and I wondered how common this is (I'm a very new dulcimer owner). I began to notice a rather persistent very high harmonic every time I strummed, no matter which strings or notes I was strumming. The more I played, the more I noticed it and the more irritating it became. Today I couldn't stand it any more and began to troubleshoot. It was the A string only, and at first I thought it might be hitting a fret, but even when I was playing on it, it didn't come anywhere near any higher frets. Then I thought it might be resonating with one of the D strings, but careful testing proved that wrong. I thought, OMG, it's a problem with my dulcimer! Argghh! $$$$!! The strange thing was, it was harmonizing with itself--it sounded like a built-in harmonic on the A string all by itself. I thought, what could make that happen? Well, what if there were a defect in the string, a weakness somewhere in it that effectively made it two semi-separate strings, each vibrating at its own rate. With several fingers crossed, I RnR'd the string with a new one. Ta-da—Problem solved! No more irritating sound! And no repair bill! O happy day!

I've used linux 20+ years and I dual boot Ubuntu/Win 10.

You might try these on tefview:  

www.banjohangout.org/archive/223939

Me too. I thought I'd see some activity by starting this thread. I guess there aren't nearly as many purchases being made of dulcimers here as there is on my other music sites. It's always fun to see the new stuff, but maybe dulcimer players are more conservative. Well, the thread is here, maybe someone will get something new some day.

Thirty-two bit support is pretty much on the way out, across the board, on all fronts, not just Apple.

I think I've bought my last Apple machine. After being assured this new computer would open all my old Apple documents by two different Apple employees, I got it home and discovered it wouldn't. 20 years worth of work.  

The main problem with Catalina is that it no longer supports 32bit programs, only 64 bit. Many apps, including printer drivers, are 32 bit and many of them won't be updated to 64 bit soon if ever. I'm glad Phroedrick could go back to Mojave, but if you haven't backed up your computer, you could really be out of luck.

Banjimer, that last reply pretty much summed up my own thinking, but I wanted to confirm it with others.  Thanks. 

It's a great instrument looking for a buyer, and that probably won't happen at an estate sale. If I had some spare cash, I'd make it mine and have it converted to left-handed at the shop where it was built.  But I can't offer them a fair price right now, and I wouldn't risk any hard feelings in a valuable friendship over a business deal. .

I play guitar and dabble in mando, banjo, uke and a little dobro.  I've loved McSpadden dulcimers and enjoyed playing them on trips to Mountain View for many, many years but never owned one. 

Thanks for the great advice, which I'll share with the owners. 

If you intend to sell it at an estate sale, you can expect to sell it at a price below the $250-$300 range.  This forum will bring your dulcimer to the attention of multiple dulcimer players of all levels.  These potential buyers will know that McSpadden sells their new dulcimers for about $500, and an offering price of $250-$300 would be a good price for an instrument in near mint condition. 

At an estate sale you are not likely to find a dulcimer player looking for a new instrument.  It gets back to the law of supply and demand.   An estate sale will be unlikely to bring the instrument to the attention of a knowledgeable person looking for a dulcimer.  For those buyers, it will be more of a curiosity than a musical instrument, thus decreasing its value in their eyes.  .

However, if you decide on the estate sale and it doesn't sell, you can always list it here with some pictures and pertinent information regarding its condition.  McSpadden dulcimers tend to sell relatively quickly on this forum when offered at a fair price.

Those are good questions about storage.  If they don't let it go through the estate sale this weekend, they might follow your suggestion about photos and offering it for sale on this forum...and I'll know some additional details to add!  Thanks so much. 

I did not see your post before I entered my comments. If you like it and can get it at $250'ish I'd jump all over it.

I would concur with a price of $250 to $300 (as Banjimmer suggested) provided it is in good shape and your description suggests that it is. One factor a savvy buyer would want to know is how it has been cared for, particularly how it was stored. Was it in a rental storage unit without thermal control, in a damp basement, in an attic space? If you have that information, it may be helpful. Temperature and humidity excesses in either direction are not healthy for a fine musical instrument.

Would you want to post pictures here?

Had you considered asking your friends if you could advertise it for sale on this site? That may bring a better price than an estate sale.

Thank you both.  I'm not sure the young owner ever played it.  I can't find a mark or ding on it.  I've been visiting the Dulcimer Shoppe in Mountain View since the '70s and know their work....it looks like it just came out of the case for the first time ever, and it has one of the prettiest figured walnut tops I've ever seen from there.

Thanks for helping me and my friends. 

The name on the label adds nothing to the value in this case...

Used McSpadden dulcimers are not all that rare, but there is a regular market.  The obvious answer is that it is worth what someone is willing to pay.  I would give it a resale value of $250-$300 if it is in good shape and free of cracks or damage.  The case adds little to the value on the resale market.

I'll appreciate your advice on behalf of my friends, who have a McSpadden SW12WW (all-walnut, beautiful flame top) dulcimer built in December 2003 with George Looney's name on the label.  It's in a hardshell case with a McSpadden sticker and looks like it came straight out of the Dulcimer Shoppe in Mountain View.  I don't think their son ever really played it.

They've asked for help in determining its value, but I'm not finding records of sales for the same model in similar years online.  I believe a new one with similar specs + pro case would be around $680 or so, including sales tax, but prices were much lower in 2003.

If they let it go through an estate sale, it feels like they'll get only a fraction of its value.  If it were yours, what would you ask, or what's a reasonable price to request, please?  What other avenues would you try to get the most value for a really, beautiful instrument that needs a buyer?  

Thanks so much.  I'm enjoying this site and look forward to learning more about mountain dulcimers here.  

You're welcome you're welcome. 

Great!  Yes -- back to "normal" according to my Senior memory.  Thank you thank you!

Ken, I think this is now fixed up.  Please go take a look and also let me know if you see any lingering or additional problems related to this.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. 

If I had a new/new-to-me dulcimer I'd post!  

I should mention that our members who are dulcimer makers/luthiers often utilize our Dulcimer Making Group to post about their latest creations that they themselves constructed.  :)

Yes, I have seen a few NDD threads, but not many. I thought a thread like this might get more people to post. Just a thought. We will see.

That's a really cool dulcimer, thanks for the details on it. How does it sound?

No, not today.

Most of us just post a separate thread when we acquire or make a new instrument, rather than having a single thread of new dulcimers. 

But here's my newest build.  This Holly Leaf is shape based on one of two Civil War or earlier instruments known to have been made in this recognizable pattern -- one in North Carolina and a similar but different holly leaf shape made in Virginia by a different builder.  Great minds think alike and all that.

Mine is not an exact replica of the one which was built in Burnsville, NC.  Rather,  I 'softened' the original rigid straight lines by curving the shoulders and tail.   Walnut and Maple.  Rosewood tuning pegs.  Staple frets for the melody string only.  Width 7.5", Length 34.5".  Side height 1.5".  Fretboard 1" high x 1.125" wide.

 

As with all things this is taking time. And even now, I see places where I didn't get all of the old finish off and need to get back to sanding. I resist the idea of using a stripper since it would be just this one time project. But the craftsman in me demands I get this right. Especially since the back is some really nice mahogany.

But I have to say, I DO like the Tung Oil. It does take time to dry, but from what I am seeing so far, it is well worth the time.

Pics are not the best quality, but this is just an update.

 Front in progress.jpg - 23KB

I belong to several music forums. It is quite common for folks to share their new instrument acquisitions with pictures and details. It's interesting to see what folks are getting and hear their stories.

As dulcimer players, I know we quite often acquire new or new-to-us dulcimers. 

What are your thoughts on sharing your NDD's right here? Who wants to start?

I'm looking into this Ken.  It looks like if you make a new post in a group discussion, it does rise to the top as it should.  (there are sometimes a couple of 'pinned' discussions that always stay at top though). However, it also seems that after a recent site update, past group discussions got a bit scrambled in order, making it hard to find discussions that were somewhat recent, if they have not had a new post after the site update.

Not sure I'll be able to re-order them again, but am looking into it.