Tish Westman, a member here, has a luthier shop and also teaches dulcimer and psalty at Tamarak near Beckley. She is a wonderful ambassador for the mountain dulcimer (gifted composer, singer and player as well).
I've seen them at the Kentucky Craft Center, just off I-75 in Berea. There were a couple of Warren May instruments, and examples from a couple of other Kentucky builders
It also helps to keep the thumb on your left hand on the back of the neck, not wrapped around the side. Looks really nice Scott. Have fun with it.
I play tenor ukulele, and I was taught to hold the uke above my waist, at a slight upward angle, and to use my right forearm to press the uke against my body. (and relax!) No strap is needed.
For stage work my Jerry Rockwell large hourglass, if I want to get jazzy, and old Jim Good set up like Alan Freeman's in Jim's weird G tuning, and for learning new tunes (in DAd) or jamming, a (supposedly) WV made small hourglass.
Scott, 155 tuning on a just intonated dulcimer is as close to musical heaven as it gets in our world. Playing dulcimer without drones is like playing bag pipes with only a chanter. Its just not right... Robert.
"Coyote" John Blosser calls Ionian Mode "The Mode of the Gods". He plays in it almost exclusively.
This may not be the best area to respond but I a firm believer in the 1-3-5 tunings. The chord possibilities are endless and you can really do some very interesting chord progressions. So D-F#-A or C-E-G or F-A-C can be a revelation. I went to conservatory and "think" in keys and chords so it seems familar to me.
All that said I recently tried D-A-A and it was - in a word - thriling! It does seem that the MD wants to have a drone that rings along with your melody.
So I guess you can have the best of both worlds tune a drone tuning for some songs - tune in a "chordal" mode when you want to do something else.
If nothing else I got over my fear of tuning my strings!
Well I yielded to temptation and bought the Dulcinet. I wanted to experiment with chromatic frets and right now these are going for around $150.
So far it is a fantastic little instrument to explore with and it seems to have a sweet tone. The chromatic frets are messing with what little fingering I had already self-taught myself. I do wish it was more "dulicimer" like. I still haven't figured out he best way to hold it. I'm thinking of putting a leather tie or some sort of strap. Any ideas or comments are welcome.
I tuned it to D-F#-A-A so now I have a fine instrument for adding chords to a jam session. I just thought maybe someone else might want to noodle around with it as well. Description below.
Dulcinet T, Rosewood, Hearts The Dulcinet™ is a very unique instrument. It is about the size of a tenor ukulele so it is small and light, easy to hold and carry around. It is strung like a dulcimer, but backwards. It has one wound string, and two other courses of lighter gauge steel strings, the bottom course is two strings tuned in unison. There are 19 chromatic frets. The scale length is roughly 430mm or 17". It can be tuned in different ways, but the sweet spot seems to be G3-D4-G4G4.
As one can see in this previously posted photo, our three cats find my playing interesting. They seem to particularly like "Grey Cat on a tennessee Farm"
My 3 furry amigos . Usually one or two will wander in and plop down next to me or even rub the dulcimer as I try to play it.
You think that's funny? Murray (the Manatee) wants to take the vocal solo and the instrumental break on Old Man(atee) River!
James, it was made by Folkcraft.
My dog was jelous at first, of the time I spent focusing on playing, but after awhile she got used to it.
Smiley Friend, does a humming type howl when I am listening to dulcimer music, he especially likes to hear Ken Backer and other deep male voices, then he really sings. Smiley just stares at me when I play. 
Sally's dog and cats pretty much ignore my playing. On the other hand, my pet Manatee and I are working up a duet set of water songs.
Robert -- Lisa gave you the simplest answer -- we re-tune. If the notes are not available on the melody string you are not in the right mode. In your case DAd would not be the correct mode. Here's a link to a YouTube vid where dholeton plays Precious Memories in Ionian Mode (he uses Eb Bb Bb -- half a step up from DAA. There is also contact info for the player and other information in the comments below the tune.
BY slowing down the video you should be able to pick out the frets he is using, and write your own tab from that.
How do your pets react to your playing? My older cat Fifi likes to sleep on my feet as I play . My dog Scout doesn't know what to make of it (that's her reaction to most things), and my young cat Baby is too busy causing mayhem, bringing in her trophys for us to admire , to care.
Dalton, If the notes appear in a vertical line in your tab, it was also written for Chord/melody style. Just ignore the other lines and just play the one on the melody string. If the notes appear on the middle or bass strings, it was probably written as a fingerpicking or flatpicking tab. If you give us the names of the tunes you want to learn, we can give you direction on where to find them.
Dalton, the short answer is- we'll often re-tune our melody string so that the melody notes we need are playable on the melody string and not 'missing'.
Here is a blog post I wrote about why I might be in a different tuning in order to get those 'missing' notes on my melody string...it's about DAA, but can be applied to help answer your question: http://dulcimer-noter-drone.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-i-like-daa-tuning.html
I'm sure others will chime in with some great replies as well. :)
Dan,
I'm sorry we were not able to fix your tablet problem and I'm sorry the site does not meet your needs.
Please let me know if you want to leave the site and if so, I can assist you in deleting your account.
Hi Lisa,
My point was that it shouldn't be happening on a desktop screen either. otherwise you're limited to a few 'preferred widths', and losing real estate..
i told you to get the Jurassic plugin 
John, I've always read that squashing a desktop browser screen does not accurately replicate what happens on true mobile devices. I imagine tests are usually better on a real mobile device?
Wish I could lose weight by just squashing my screen... 
John, I am confused. Why would you want to make your screen narrower and narrower? Instead of changing the shape of your screen, use CTRL - to decrease its size and CTRL + to increase it. That way the aspect ratio stays the same.
On my laptop, I can reduce the size of the screen as much as I want and it all stays visible and functional. When I increase its size, it works until 150%, when it looks like Dan's screenshot above. But no matter how the site is laid out, if you increase more and more eventually you will run out of space. You can break the laws of man, but not the laws of physics.
I don't see any differences between IE, Firefox, and Chrome in terms of the size of the screen.
No problem George! Be sure to look over all the tabs and settings in your "Account Settings"- you get lots of choices on how you want your account to work here! 
Update: Hey George- beatuful new avatar you added there! 
Thank you very much, sincerely, computer challenged, appreciate your time.
Dan, I'm sorry you're having trouble here, but your anger seems misplaced. As testified to by others, the site is working on iPads, Kindles, Nooks, and both tablets and phones using Adroid. So your insistence that there is a coding problem with the site is suspect at best. Not only that, but Strumelia, myself, and others have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to help you.
I will say this as plainly as I can. The toolbar should not be there. Instead, on mobile devices, you get the mobile menu icon, which is that series of 6 white squares and rectangles. I can see it on your screenshot, so I know it's there. When you click that, you get a menu that has all the options of the toolbar. Please give it a try.
Hi George,
Dusty said:
George, once you are logged in, hold your cursor over your name in the toolbar (but don't click), and you will see a drop-down menu. Click on "Account Settings." Once there, you will see the generic picture with an option underneath it to "upload new image." Choose that and then you can upload a picture from your computer. When you are done, don't forget to "Save Changes" on the bottom of the screen.
Let us know if you still can't do it. 
I was able to add my personal photo to profile, but when I post anything in forums, it just comes up with the stock dulcimer photo, how do I change that to a personal photo, Thanks from a very computer challenged individual!
Dan, if you purposefully zoomed in, then the only issue is that the tool bar that would show up on a website viewed from a pc is now in the mobile menu icon, meaning those white squares and rectangles. Click on that and a new toolbar will appear with all the options you would normally see. It did not exist on the old site because that site was not enabled for tablets and smartphones. This one is. The mobile interface is not identical to the regular website view, but once you get used to it, it should function better. (For the record, I still use my pc whenever I actually want to do anything other than listen to tunes.)
Yes, I did get a good deal on it, less than half what it retails fro, (which was still a good chunk) But really enjoying it, thanks for the feedback
lol Dusty. I hear what you are saying. I think these are points that might be addressed further down the road. They'd require some in depth testing and there are other issues which take precedence for a good while yet. Not saying these things are not important, just that a bunch of other other stuff requires my time ahead of them, and it'll likley be while...a couple months maybe, before I can approach them. I'm still in the 'gros-tuning' stage rather than the 'fine-tuning' stage. 
One thing i will say though- this site was built on a Jamroom platform, but was put together so that it could import and support our various familiar ning-platform content and functions. To do that, some areas were coded differently from other areas, which intentionally makes them behave a little differently from each other. The Forums area for instance is not quite the same as the Groups features, or the video area that combines uploade, vimeo, and youtube videos all together. The site's areas all do function a bit differently from each other, and their coding is different, so different areas of the site might not display exactly the same on some devices...just a thought that may or may not be relevant to what you brought up. :)
