Was happy to run across this forum. Jethro Amburgey was my 2nd great uncle, making his son Morris a cousin. My aunt has one of Jethro's dulcimer's and I have one of Morris'. The article below adds a bit to our family history.
This Saturday was the first pleasant Saturday all summer to play on my porch, so I got a head start. Only had a hour to spare but it was time well spent!. Cherokee shuffle, Over the waterfall, Seneca square dance, Boatman, Girl I left behind, Big Sioty, Saint Ann's reel. And some basic noodling, I love noodling...
Still looking forward to it here! really want to play Werner Van Rillaer's "The Artist", but I cannot, cannot figure out his DAG tuning. It's the G melody string that doesn't sound right? His sounds lower? I always tune by ear from online.... LOL
I'll be playing, but I live in the woods...nobody's gonna hear me 'cept the fire ants!
I'm going to add that tune, "You Gotta Move" that Bobby Ratliff does. I was going to cut under and around this tree and a storm came up so I decided to wait until Monday........
@dulcimerbill & @salt-springs-- wonderful! Gonna be lots of music played around the front porch of the world on 31 August.
:) Strumelia
Thanks for the timely reminder, Robin! 
Oh yes...........I'm planning on doing some tunes from, South of the Border and loud too!......Ahem!
Great information! I didn't know until now about just intonation or natural temperament. I read through the linked discussion thread about JI and that describes it perfectly. And yes, the length of the first fret is less than the length of the second so I believe that confirms it. I'm pretty sure when I was first learning to play years ago, I was playing melody/drone style and not chords so I wouldn't have noticed it then. I'll also try tuning to DAA to see if that makes a difference.
Thanks, everyone, for all your help! I learned a lot from this discussion.
Being just newbies, my wife and I are looking forward to Playing Music on the Porch. Our neighbors may not like it though! LOL
Three weeks away, friends-- always the last Saturday in August!
If it were me, I'd fashion a tailblock from a 1/4" piece of complimentary wood and make the top of it the bridge, as shown in photo of my recent build. Instead of the single large string-pin in the tail, use three brass brads/tacks to hold the string loops. Of course you could make the tailpiece thicker -- a little, or a lot and notch it on top to install an ordinary bridge.
Howie Mitchell's "floating bridge" design has been largely discredited. This design tends to allow the bridge end of the fretboard to bow up. Some folks just glue a filler piece of wood in the gap to solidify things. The sound doesn't suffer much from the modification.
It looks like the bottom of the fretboard is made to float. Howie Mitchell advocated this design in one of his early books. Following his plans, the hitch pins were attached to the fretboard.
A nice looking dulcimer!
Like most instruments made by makers who favour just intonation (aka 'natural temperament') Warren's dulcimers do not really 'like' DAd tuning. If you tune it to DAA I bet it will sound sweet and lovely, particularly in melody/drone style - but simple chords will sound glorious too.
Greetings! Was directed here from Chiff & Fipple, and am glad I found this forum!
So, I cam across this dulcimer recently and hope that perhaps a maker or knowledgeable player can help with some questions!
First, of course, if anyone can tell by looking who made it, I'd be grateful to learn that much!
As it is, its seems mostly finished. It's a three string instrument with nicely carved scroll, handmade tuning pegs, hollow & fretless fingerboard, transverse bars on the back (one in the upper bout, one in the lower), nicely carved and indented sound holes, inlaid purfling and a very curious cut-out design at the lower end of the instrument.
Obviously, it needs a nut and either one or two end plates where the end pins will be inserted.
The nut up at the scroll end is easy enough to sort out. But down at the lower end, the top of the instrument has been deliberately cut in such a way and has not been glued to the block in such a way that the fingerboard and instrument top can be (slightly) lifted and depressed.
My main questions are:
What is the purpose of this design?
Where should the hitch pins be attached? On the end of the fingerboard, or on the block that the body is attached to.
I'm wondering if this is some kind of "buzzing bridge" like arrangement that one finds on hurdy-gurdies.
There are no maker's marks or labels of any kind. It appears to be extremely well crafted and fitted together. I'd really like to get this working properly, and it's obviously more of a job than just nailing a couple old fiddle strings on there!
Thanks in advance for any help!
Picture 1 shows how the cut-out part of the top of the instrument is definitely not glued to the block.
Picture 2 shows a detail of the scroll and pegs, hopefully for identification!
Picture 3 shows a broad view of the cut-out in the lower bout.
The answer to this mystery is described here: https://fotmd.com/forums/forum/site-questions-how-do-i/35300/mystery-solved-comment-walls-not-indexed-in-site-searches
Comments in Comment Walls are not indexed within site searches.
Discussion threads in Groups and Forums ARE included in site searches for phrases.
FYI: All Warren May dulcimers have a lifetime warranty on playability if you are the original owner according to his website.
I agree that the green foam is not causeing any problems. But Warren made that dulcimer to be used with "ball-end" strings. If you remove those loop-end-strings and just slide ball-end strings in from the rear, it will surely look a lot nicer.
I would take it to Warren and ASK him about the instrument. He keeps good records and should know whether this was a "just intonation" fret scale or what exactly is going on.
"If the length of the first fret is less than the length of the second it is just intonation"
Start at the bottom of the thread and you will find some helpful information, to be sure.
Check the fret spacing using a fret calculator.
Two possibilities given your new information.
1. (Less Likely) This would have been early in Warren May's dulcimer building career. He may have been in the early stages of getting proper intonation, something he improved with more time and experience. In other words, he may have misplaced the frets enough to be noticable.
2. (More Likely) Warren does make dulcimers with just intonation. Since you said the chords didn't sound right, that sounds like the dulcimer may have been built with just intonation. Just intonation is going to sound really good with the drones, but not so good if you are trying to make chords. The frets have been positioned to blend with the drones, not for making chords. Traditionally, dulcimers were built with just intonation out of necessity since the frets extended only under the melody string(s), you couldn't play chords. When builders made the switch to full-width frets, chords became possible and some builders adjusted their fret placement to accommodate chord playing.
And I wouldn't worry about the felt or foam on the tail end. It's there to protect the tail end of the dulcimer and to prevent the strings from digging into the wood. As long as its not under the vibrating section of the string it shouldn't cause a problem. Many dulcimer builders put some felt, leather, etc. between the strings and the tail end of the dulcimer. You can remove it if it annoys you, but it probably has nothing to do with your intonation problems.
Intresting............I have 2 Warren May's of similar construction. I really can't say for sure but it looks like the strings on the bridge are seated on some sort of foam rubber. If I were going to bet on finding the problem I would start by removing that and if I had to,use a piece of felt or better yet, nothing whatsoever.
You could send these pics to Warren and I can all but guarentee that help help you figure it out. I really don't think the cold dorm room did any damage to it, but Warren will surely tell you about that too.
What have you got to lose?
Thanks for all the good advice! Here is more information. This is a Warren May dulcimer. He taught industrial arts at my high school in 1973 and I bought the dulcimer then. I learned to play it a little at the time, then neglected it for many years while I was working. When I retired just recently I decided to get serious about learning to play it, so I had the strings replaced. The intonation issue is pretty noticeable on chords. I didn't notice it when I first got it, which makes me think that it is something that happened over the years. I am embarrassed to say that I left it in a college dorm room over Christmas break when it wasn't heated, and I have wondered if that had anything to do with it. I'm attaching photos.
Thanks, everyone, for your helpful responses!
Well Lois, aren't you the sleuth! I can't believe you found that! The irony is that I was the one who posted that pdf file, but it was never intended to be public. I posted it on a hidden page of my website and with no identifying information.
As you can see from the first response to my thread, Maddie Myers in Australia very generously offered to send me her copy of the book. I am still grateful for that. Shortly afterwards, someone else I've known for a few years asked if there was anyway I could share it. So I scanned the book and posted it as a "secret" link on a semi-hidden page of my website. My plan was to share the document with a single person, not to make it available to the public at large.
Since the book is out-of-print, making copies is legal. But I am still uncomfortable with the ethics of posting a free copy online, so I've taken the link down. Apologies to those who were hoping to get a copy. If there is enough interest, perhaps we should contact Randy directly or Kicking Mule publications or whoever owns the copyright.
Using the earliest Wayback Machine capture , however, produced this great resource &, yes, @ruth-lawrence , I was able to click & find "Cats in the Cradle. " I know Dusty's site (still online at this writing) let you find the song. Don't know if his link is a more recent posting from the same people after the Berkeley.edu site was dropped, but there's never enough ways to find a song when you really want it & this did indeed give a lot of 60s & 70s songs.
Scratch that if you are hoping for the actual sheet music. I went to the "Browse the Collection" tab. Scrolled down & clicked on Box 75 - Victor Herbert 1910-1920, but it doesn't work. Apparently the site just listed what they owned (& maybe the covers). If you can get to Johns Hopkins University, I suppose it's useful for serious researchers, but not for the rest of us. <SIGH!>
Like a library, the Wayback Machine feature doesn't create the material, just produces what is (or in their case, was) out there.
I tend to use the most recent date available in the hopes of it containing the most information. In this case I later checked the first posting and think the site is less useful for us than it originally appeared.
Lovers of old-time sheet music can still find the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music online even though it's no longer online at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. The Wayback Machine capture for February 10, 2013 is the last available, but can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20130210014156/https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/index.html
-- can you tell I'm goofing off by prowling the Dulcimer Resources: TABS/Books/websites/DVDs?
https://johnsackenheim.com is more "traditional" than "country music." I almost didn't look at it, then decided to peek.
This discussion brought up the dreaded "404 page not found", so I did my own finding via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (a tool I highly recommend). This went down fairly recently as this was last scanned Nov. 21, 2018. By the way I started with the general website Barb Feick did & it's quite huge, as playing dulcimer was only one of her instruments & one of her interests http://barbfeick.com/
Right now I'm looking for online sources of material, especially tab in preparation for going digital as much as possible. To my dulcimer friends like @ken-hulme & others who believe tab is a crutch, I'm definitely handicapped & need it. Sorry, but my ear lets me goof too often & memory has never been my strength -- Storytelling is best "from the heart & the moment" (although I sometimes have printed references handy), while memory is for acting. (I do community theatre to help exercise it, but don't tend to be "letter perfect.")
Hey everybody, especially @dusty-turtle who said he'd "been looking for this book for years", I thought I'd check to see if anybody was selling it, & found a pdf version online!!! https://www.rivercitydulcimers.com/Randy%20Wilkinson,%20Elizabethan%20Dulcimer.pdf.
See it pays to prowl old discussions.
@Susie Too bad her birthday wasn't 7 April! :)
@Susie Too bad her birthday wasn't 7 April! :)
@Susie You just needed an older sister! haha
@Susie You just needed an older sister! haha
Wow! I asked my husband, Craig Potts, to pick the number and he gave me a good one!
The word phrases were used in an FOTMD discussion, but not a discussion created by the person that posted what I was hunting for, so I should have said it was, as Strumelia suspected, a long comment. I'm not absolutely sure that it was Greg who posted it. He (Greg or someone else) was explaining to someone firstly that the name of a mode is determined by which note falls at the point at which the mode begins, & the key signature note is determined by which note falls at the 3rd fret. At the end of the posted comment he described Parallel Modes and Relative Modes. I'd like to re-read the whole thing.
Thanks SaltSprings! That explains the mystery- the word phrases Anne was searching this site for weren't actually used in that fotmd discussion... but rather they appear on the other site... the site that was linked to by Greg. 
That's why they didn't turn up in any searches of this site.
https://fotmd.com/strumelia/group_discuss/1042/great-resource-for-music-theory-group
Go to the link............tobyrush..........there are charts and the distinction between parallel and relative that Gregg posted.
