Is a dulcimer with maple top, sides and back considered to be a good sounding, durable dulcimer?
I've made and played a number of all maple dulcimers over the years. Durable certainly; it's maple after all, not Aspen or Balsa wood. A bit harder than walnut or cherry.
"Good sound", like "Beauty" is in the eye/ear of the beholder. What you consider "good" might not be so 'good' to me or someone else. I prefer a "highly silvery" sound, where others prefer a more "mellow" tone like a baritone uke or guitar. This is why we highly recommend you hear the dulcimer you're going to buy.
Thank you so much for the words of wisdom! As usual, they are much appreciated!
You do indeed see lots of dulcimers made entirely of a single hard tonewood, most commonly walnut, but cherry and maple as well. They are not as common as dulcimers with one of those woods for the back and sides and soft tonewood such as spruce, cedar or redwood for the top. The top plays a bigger part in the sound than do the back and sides, so an all-maple dulcimer would, as Strumelia says, have a bright, crisp tone. Additionally, it would likely have exceptional sustain. I believe Linda Brockinton mainly plays an all-maple McSpadden specifically for the extra sustain to enhance her soft, fingerstyle play.
Speaking further about sound box sizes- I also have an all-curly-maple hummel (mtn dulcimer like in many ways) which has a very large and deep sound box/body... and even though it's all maple it has a big resonant mellow tone. My maple mtn dulcimer has a very shallow depth body, and thus its voice is crisp and clear, less 'mellow'. They are both all maple but very different body dimensions and so have different tones.
"Good" sound can mean something different depending on personal taste. Both my all-maple instruments sound wonderful, but they sound very different from each other!
My Keith Young curly maple dulcimer is all maple, even the fingerboard, and it sounds great and is in perfect condition after 26 years. I used it for this site's logo . Maple has a nice crisp sound, as opposed to slightly 'mellower' tone of walnut or spruce for example. It's also pretty hard, so (I'm guessing) would be a little less likely to get dinged. That said, I feel the volume and dimensions of the sound box tends to be a bigger factor in the tone of the sound than the type of wood does.
Is a dulcimer with maple top, sides and back considered to be a good sounding, durable dulcimer?
