Hello there, I am new to the community and new to dulcimers, so I am learning how to play and maintain them. I recently purchased two dulcimers at an auction and had a couple of questions.
The first dulcimer is a 6 string and everything I have read is 3 strings is more than enough for a dulcimer. Can I remove 3 strings and turn this into a 3 string? From what I had read there are 2 melody, 2 middle and 2 bass strings? I assume I could remove one of each to make this happen, or should I just leave it as 6 string? I will be attaching 4 images of the 6 string, in the last image I have blue arrows showing the strings I believe that I could remove to make it a 3 string?
The second dulcimer has no strings on it currently and there appears to be pegs or rods missing from the bottom that would secure the strings? This question stems from the first dulcimer, if I remove those 3 strings that I had pictured, that would give me a melody, middle and bass to string this with, correct? Also in the NoStrings4 picture there is still one little I believe brass nail still in, so my guess would be I need to add 2 more nails/pegs/rods to secure the strings. Also on this dulcimer the pegs at the top are wood. Is there anything I need to know about that, care, process, etc?
Hopefully this all makes sense, if I need more pics, better explanations please let me know. My daughter and I are excited to start learning and see what we can do. Thanks for reading and any help!
