You can make a stable, playable dulcimer which is only a stick. You just won't hear much without adding a sound box or putting it on a table top resonator.

The cardboard dulcimers are a good example. The structure is usually a piece of 1x2 lumber with a modest strum-hole. Once tuned and settled in, the cardboard dulcimers will often hold relative tuning for months when stored in a cloth bag, and only need a touch-up when string tension is affected by room temperature changes.

I'm not a fan of hollowed out fret boards, etc. I'm not convinced they can be proven to make better music. When I build, I like the basic stick and box construction. I think pear and hour glass box shapes, fancy woods, lots of sound holes, etc.are mostly decorative.Box size does definitely affect the sound produced.

Decoration is fine, but should be seen as such. I put ebony or mother-of-pearl dots on my simple sticks and prefer trapezoidal boxes with shaped holes to rectangles with round holes. Sometimes I paint folkish designs on the boxes.

I can appreciate fancy dulcimers just as I can appreciate an Aston-Martin car - but I drive a basic small car and enjoy playing "cheap" instruments.

That makes sense wally, thanks.

It seems there are a lot of different aspects of the build that could affect how it handles tension. Bracing, full length fretboard vs discontinuous, whether the fingerboard is hollowed, how deep the strumhollow is, how thin the boards are, how high you keep your tension, etc. 

It makes sense to me that the ends of the fingerboard would slowly and gradually bow upward, but with a quality dulcimer it sounds like the consensus is that it's negligible.

I made my first dulcimer over 50 years ago. I've accumulated quite a few since then. Some instruments may only come out of a case once every five years or more. I have never detuned the strings and have noticed no particular ill effects on the these dulcimers. If anything, the strings maybe need to be changed after such a long time. But the the dulcimers themselves are fine.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

I taught engineering mechanics (Statics, Dynamics, and Strength of Materials - the courses which drove students out of Engineering) for a quarter of a century. My view is based on a lot of 'book larnin.' Over the years some of us develop structural intuition just as musical intuition grows for some and not others.

My remarks are focused on "true dulcimers" with 3 or 4 strings and a stick which runs the full length of the VSL. The body is relatively narrow and the tension of the strings is modest. The sides, front, and back are sort of a stiff tube. The tension causes the body and fret board to curve very, very slightly and the wood to "creep" slightly over a period of days and "settle in."

An acoustic guitar body has only modest amounts of bracing inside, and the heavy wound steel core strings create a much larger tensile force. Solid body guitars are very different structurally.

A fiddle body is actually a complex shell shape, and the string tensions are rather low. On many fiddles the strings have a gut or nylon core.

On a modern instrument of these families the body might actually be graphite reinforced plastic. Tension will still cause minuscule bowing of the body, but there will be no creep.

There are no simple answers or explanations for such questions. I'm still trying to fully comprehend musical modes and remember chord structures.

The advice to loosen the strings is common for guitars.  But string tension on guitars is much greater than that on dulcimers, and dulcimers have the ultimate brace (meaning the fretboard) keeping things intact.  Tuning down a little bit, as John and Nate have suggested, is probably a good idea but may not be necessary unless environmental conditions are going to change drastically. If the instrument is just going to sit in your closet, I wouldn't worry about it.  If you are putting it in a storage unit in the desert with no climate control, you may run into problems that loosening the strings won't solve.

P.S. Congrats on your McCafferty dulcimer. I love mine, which is evidenced in how "used" it now looks.

"but, in my opinion, the minute aspects of wooden bodies' shapes are better preserved if string tension it maintained. "

Im curious to know more about this Wally. Are you basically saying that the wood "settles" when its kept under the correct amount of tension?  Or that the changes in tension would put more stress on the wood cells/finish? Both of those would make sense to me.

Id say that detuning the strings by just a little bit is a good idea. While some instruments seem to hold up really well to warping over time...other fare less well. Damage from tension, sunlight, or moisture would be cumulative over a long time. So overall, I'd say that you dont need to be overly concerned, but it's probably better to store it with the strings somewhat detuned if youre not planning on playing it for a while. It would probably only make a small difference over a long time though, if at all.

String instruments which are played regularly are typically "kept in tune" for many decades on end.

Strings may be damaged by age or environmental factors, of course, but, in my opinion, the minute aspects of wooden bodies' shapes are better preserved if string tension it maintained. If you unbox a dulcimer with loose strings it usually takes several tunings to get it to hold properly. Tension also keeps the "bridge" and nut secure.

Wooden pegs are another matter. They and the matching holes will undergo changes in roundness with changes in humidity. That's why moving a dulcimer from Phoenix to Seattle may require attention by a luthier.

If you have a 10 million dollar violin, controlled storage conditions are probably in order, but the primary benefit goes to the gut strings and horsehair on the bow.

If your dulcimer is worth less than $10,000, keep it in the case and keep it out of rain, snow, deserts, and floods. Storing it in direct sunlight probably isn't beneficial, but a lot of wall-hanging dulcimers stay playable.

Jon, I think that would be a good idea myself.  That way they won't stretch out unevenly over time.  Throwing some of those little dessicant packs in the case to keep down moisture might be a good idea as well.

Hi kid's once again it's me Jon Lilley. with one more of those silly questions. I just recently obtained my second instrument, a Terry McCafferty dulcimer, wonderful  instrument. but here's my question: if you are going to store an instrument for any length of time, should you loosen all the strings?