Thanks for the reassurance! I've never played guitar or banjo so I never had this problem before ... do guitar strings get as fine as .010? My Folkcraft is 20 years old, the VSL is 27 3/4". Bucko Futreal said:

Any of the ball-ends, regardless of their marketing, should do fine -- at least that's what my experience suggests. I purchase individual guitar strings for all my dulcimers -- any decent music store that sells guitars will have lots of 'em on hand. You can also order 'em: http://www.juststrings.com/singlestrings.html For instance, for my dulcimer in GDD tuning, I do .22 for the bass string and .12 for the other strings. On DAD dulcimers, I do .24, .18, and .12. Those are both Folkcrafts, by the way, so probably the same neck length as yours.

My Folkcraft came to me wearing a set of ball-end strings. I've replaced them once, with a new set, but the set I was able to find was the standard D'Addario set of loop-ends. Every set I have seen in the store or online is loop-end, but my MD was obviously built for ballends, with pins to fit through the holes in the balls. Loops work, but I think I'd get more consistent tension with ball-ends. Should I invest in four individual ball-end banjo or guitar strings?
updated by @b-ross-ashley: 06/08/16 09:24:05PM