Butch, this is all lovely!  Thank you, this will continue to give me more ideas. I see you guys are on bandcamp -- I've heard a bit of Rockwell and Bohlman on YouTube. Good old bandcamp!

I've got a delay pedal on the way, and with some tips from a performance at an art gallery I'm planning to get a pedal that can do tremolo, flanger, and phaser. I don't know if I'm that interested in using a flanger effect, but a slow tremolo could be fun and I've wanted a phaser for another musical project with a synthesizer. Now I understand why guitarists have so many pedals.

That art gallery performance: I should have recorded it somehow. I did a mix of more traditional playing on my cardboard Double Eagle (the one in my profile pic) and some slower atmospheric playing on the electric with my reverb (similar to the videos I've posted recently), interspersed with my folk flutes (low and high whistles and NAF). It was an exhibit of religious art so I played almost all hymns. I closed out with "Abide with Me, 'Tis Eventide." ( https://hymnary.org/text/abide_with_me_tis_eventide )

I really like playing hymn tunes in this Hearts of Space, maybe almost Robert Fripp fashion.

I once had a student who bought a chromatic dulcimer and wanted me to teach her how to transition from a diatonic instrument. So the first thing I did was tell her to stop thinking of the frets in a diatonic way. Think of the frets as 1 through 12. Then, memorize 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12. That was the diatonic fretboard, the D scale. And to use that as a jumping-off point. She was a good student, but not one with ambitions beyond playing for her own sake. And yet, within 6 months she could look at diatonic dulcimer tab and transpose it pretty much on the fly. This was in DAD tuning.

If you're a visual learner, I think blacking out some of the frets is a great idea. 

"This calls for a different approach than I've been used to."

And this ^^^ tells me yr gonna be fine.

An electric. Especially when played finger-style, it can be wonderfully expressive. 

Brian Bolhman does some pretty cool stuff with delay and reverb

As does Jerry Rockwell:

I liked yr video. Good luck with that thing!

I have built up a modest pedalboard: distortion, chorus, reverb. The reverb pedal is fantastic! I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.

This morning I recorded a video where I use the reverb pedal at its most demure. I'll probably post it in the videos section. I'll work on recording it better, as well as playing it better. This calls for a different approach than I've been used to.

Jamie, that makes a lot of sense to me. Electric instruments can be much more responsive, which can make subtle differences in play more noticeable.

I have a hard time believing that wood actually affects tone at all, or if it does, only in a very very subtle way. It seems to me that electric guitar companies put that narrative forward in order to charge extra for 'tonewoods' and people who buy electric guitars made of expensive woods tend to want to believe it, so they perpetuate the narrative. 

I definitely believe that if someone believes their electric guitar sounds good, they will play it better. So much of the subtleties of tone come from the player and if you feel good, you play good.

I think that comes from the player, not the instrument itself. I'm not trying to come off as pretentious or a know-it-all. The physics of how a magnetic pickup creates a signal makes me very skeptical of the idea that its possible for the body of the instrument to affect the tone, and I havent found any serious scientific sources that suggest it does.

Id chalk what you are describing up to the players themselves and not the instrument.

Hi Nate.I started out as an acoustic guitar player.As you point out there's a big difference between acoustic and electric.I used to be able to tell if a prominent electric guitarist was initially an acoustic player-something about the tone.When I played in folk rock bands I realized electric players had a mystique about tone,sustain,etc. that went beyond the pickup position or the Amp.There is something in that I think,from choice of woods,particular year of making,etc.Also the tubes versus solid state dichotomy.In addition I remember an electric band might sound great on a Thursday and sound hollow,no tone on a Friday.A change in atmosphere,electrical current?My point?Electrified instruments have a lot of variables,just like acoustics.Funny thing about it,though,put a telecaster into my hands with a good Amp,my personality changes,like picking up a hockey stick,laugh.

On an electric string instrument, none of the characteristics of the instrument itself are present in the tone. The two factors are style/number/position of pickups and fret intonation. Everything else is determined by the synthesizer/amp, which is where pedals become a useful enhancement. One benefit to solid body electric is that because the instrument doesn't need to be resonant, it can be built with very low action, which allows for techniques that are more difficult on an acoustic dulcimer.
I look forward to hearing this instrument, thanks for sharing
Nate

Cool!  I look forward to hearing that baby sing.  The chromatic fretboard would throw me off, too.

I recently got a solid body electric from Needful Strings:

https://www.needfulstringsllc.com/product/20756474/cedar-creek-solid-body-electric-mountain-dulcimer

Matthew was gracious and helpful in keeping me updated as Troy built the instrument, and it arrived safely, well-packed. This thing is lovely. The advertisement photo shows a really pale wood, which I would have been OK with, but mine is a more caramel-colored wood on top (oak?) with nice dark grain patterns which I like better: feels warm. I'll get some pictures some time.

Since I got it chromatic, it's been a challenge learning to use the chromatic fretboard. For now I've blacked out the extra frets with permanent marker (very carefully) so that I still see them but they're not as obvious. I spent days experimenting with tunings. It took a tuning down to B pretty well, but I think I'd need thicker gauge strings to make that work the best. Right now I've got it in CGF, since Dorian tuning is my favorite. I tried Phrygian and even Locrian tunings, since I could have more freedom with the chromatic frets. I even tried BDF# but then I felt like I was over my head. Opportunity to get better though. I never got good at other stringed instruments yet, and I tune my dulcimers in traditional modal tunings, using the extra fret to switch between modes, and I've liked it that way just fine. But I'm slowly starting to work out chords now that I have more freedom to do that.

I like the sound of this instrument clean -- currently I'm running it through a small Squier since my Fender amp has decided to misbehave. I also have a distortion pedal that makes it loud, and I might need to get a different kind of pedal, since this one tends to sound harsher and fuzzier than I had in mind. But of course, now that I've got an electric instrument, I'm starting to need more pedals. A reverb pedal is on the way, and I'm thinking about an octave pedal soon.