John, first, the easy part is the plain steel melody string. No options there.
Everything else only addresses the wound strings. In general, phosphor bronze will have a more mellow sound than the nickel wound. I use phosphor bronze on all my instruments. Nickel wound strings have a brighter tone. It is mainly a matter of taste.
But one issue with wound strings is that you get a lot of squeaking as your fingers move up and down on them. On a standard dulcimer, that only affects the bass string, so it is usually not that big of a deal. But on a baritone, the middle string is also wound. For that reason, a lot of people use Elixer strings, which are coated with some kind of substance (whatever the "nanoweb" stuff is) that supposedly allows your fingers to glide and thereby reduces the squeakiness. Some people say the coating mutes the tone, but I have never noticed that myself.
Another approach to reducing the squeaking is the flat-wound strings. I buy flat-wound strings by the dozen from Folkcraft (I think they have started calling them "roller-wound," but it's another approach to squeakless).
My guess is that you will not notice most of the minor differences in tone between nickel- and phosphor- and 80/20 blah blah blah. But if you are used to Elixir strings, you might notice an increase in squeakiness if you were to move to regular wound strings. I have never found a place that sells individual Elixir strings, which is why I turned to Folkcraft.
And you do not need to buy sets of dulcimer strings. Figure out what your preferences are for gauges and then buy individual strings or-as I do--individual strings in sets of a dozen.
--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator
As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie
