Thank you for the additional info and feedback, Wilfried!

Sorry, the vibrating string length is 94,1 cm !

The sound box is 95,1 cm.

Praetorius wrote the Scheitholt was made from 3 or 4 thin wooden planks - "gar schlecht zusammengefueget..."

So this old German meaning of "schlecht" doesn't mean badly or poorly but simple!

Peter - nice Scheitholt!

The original woodcut from Praetorius is not very careful with fret spacing. Well - it's a woodcut!

The measurement is from Brunswik yard = 57,07 cm , two feet with 28,5 cm and each "inch" with 2,3 cm.

So the vibrating string length is 95,1 cm.

In the image i combined the woodcut with the string spacing from Guido von Arezzo which was common for monochords.

Sadly the transformation from CAD to JPEG is very poor system!

Thank you, Rob!

Never mind, there are times when I miss listening to or commenting on other people's videos as well. Some days just contain too little time sometimes...

Peter, listened again to this one, realized I didn't make a comment. I don't know which one of the 2 I like the best! They both sound really good and your paying is excellent as usual.

Thank you, Ken! :)

@Wout: I think I should put Wilfried's book on my Christmas wish list this year! The photos on his website are great! :)

Thanks for sharing this Peter. It sounds very much like the PA German zither reproduction I made. Mine is based on an instrument in the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, PA. You did a fine job of making an interesting instrument which has a pleasant sound.

Ken
"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Und im Deutsch

Die Hummel - Das Buch zur Ausstellung :Die Geschichte des Instrumentes vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit.

Alle Abbildungen im Hauptteil sind in Farbe.

Im Anhang sind 44 historische Instrumente mit allen Maen dokumentiert.

Der Preis : 18,- + 1,40 Porto in D - (5,50 Porto in EU )

Just the info about the book (2 posts)

The Story of the Hummel - (German Scheitholt)

English version. The story of a folkinstrument from medieval times to 20th century. Translation made in USA by Christa Farnon.

The Hummel is one of the great grandfathers of the Mountain Dulcimer.

Hardcover, 181 pages, all photos in colour.

44 historical instruments with all measurements in the appendix.

22,00 + 7,00 shipping cost (priority ) Shipping will need 2 - 3 weeks !

Fastest way of ordering: to pay in (EURO) with Paypal to my e-mail adress.

(look at "Kontakt" )

The data is in Wilfried Ulrich's book, which is in German, naturlich :-)

About the hook, that's right. Sliding a noter will produce a nasty tick in the music when touching the hook. Anyway, I'm glad you didn't use the picture at the bottum of this page here as a guide:D

It is a beautiful instrument.

Hallo Wout,

thanks for your thoughts on the matter!

What I wanted to say about the hook is not, that the player could choose between a double melody string or a higher pitched drone. I'd rather think the player's choice was to have one melody string and two to threeunison drone strings OR one melody string, a higher (5th) drone and one to two drones (tuned like the melody string).

I made a doubled melody string on mine, but Praetorius doesn't mention a doubled string. In the illustration of Praetorius you can see a melody string (a little separated from the others) and three drones.

You may be right about the third fret being a little out of position. On the other hand:the "diatonic" scale we use today on our dulcimers is often a chromatic scale / tempered scale with the half tones left out (that's what I did when I just used the stewmac-calculator).

Real diatonic instruments might have had a fret spacing optimized for a real diatonic (and not-tempered) scale for a certain key, for example in D.But that's just a thought, I am not really deep into that matter.

Would be great to have at least some photos and maybe some dates and measurements of the Scheitholts in your museum depot!

I have to read the part about the marine trumpet and the Nonnentrompete these days! :)

Hopefully you didn't make the instrument as being described by Praetorius: four wooden boards poorly attached together... :D I go along with your thoughts about the tuning: 4 strings unison. The playe can choose between a double melody string or one drone tuned a fifth higer using the little hook, which draws the string on to the fret. I also think the drawning is poor and the third fret is out of position. There is just a inonic scale, so there is a 6+ fret (allthough: justthe normal one :-)

I also read the part about the Marine Trumpet and searched the internet. All the YouTube sound examples are lousy, terrible lousy! The players know how to play it by literture, but never heard one in real live. In my home town I was volunteer by the music department of a museum and there was a Nonnen trumpet an a man (!) who could play the Last Post sounding like a real trumpet.

There are also some Scheitholzer in the depot. Maybe I should organize a tour some time. It is in The Hague, The Netherlands, BTW

Again, thank you for the info. And, yes, it is late :D

Thanks Peter. It will be an evening reading (probably nighttime too)

My respect for your project! I enjoy it very much.

Important correction:

On all my comments about Michael Praetorius, the year of the edition of his book must be "1619" instead of "1519"!!! Here's the corrected picture:

As an addition to what I wrote before, I edited this illustration of Praetorius and added the fret numbers (as we usually name them today in the dulcimer world).

The hook at the 4th fret is indicated. According to the written description, some instrument may have had a second hook like that, raising the tone of one of the strings to an octave higher.

Source: Syntagma musicum. Pdf-File at

http://ia600501.us.archive.org/22/items/SyntagmaMusicumBd.21619/PraetoriusSyntagmaMusicumB2.pdf

(public domain, about 14,4 MB.
Written description of the Scheitholt on page 57 of the book, that is page 85 in the pdf-file.
Illustration of the Scheitholt on plate XXI, instrument No. 8, that is page 297 in the pdf-file.)

Thank you all for taking the time to listen and comment on my recording!

@Wout: What I made is not a 1:1 historical reconstruction. So I fretted it like a mountain dulcimer nowadays is usually fretted (and with good reason I added a 6 1/2, see below). I decided to insert "longer" frets at No. 3, 7, 10 and 14 (according to modern standard notation), but only as a help for orientation on the fretboard, I always play the drones as drones on this instrument. In Praetorius' illustration there seem to be "long" frets only (which on the other hand does not mean, that they played chords at that time. Praetorius mentions a little "stick" = noter the strings are pressed down with).

Now in the verbal description of the Scheitholt in his book, Michael Praetorius says, the instrument is stringed with three to four strings, tuned unisono. That makes sense, because this way the (often unskilled) musician was able to easily tune the instrument and he had only one kind of replacement brass wire to carry with him.

Then Praetorius says, that there is a little hook close to the middle string. After tuning, the musician could "hang in" the middle string into this little hook and so the middle string would sound a 5th higher.

So the musician could either play in a 1-1-1 tuning or he could easily change to a 1-5-1 tuning. If he decided to tune it to "D", that would mean a D-D-D tuning (like with Galax dulcimers) or a D-A-D tuning.

I did not install that little hook, but I decided to tune it to DAdd with a standard set of strings (010, 010, 014, 022).

Now there's one more interesting thing: the illustration in Praetorius' bookis quite accurate: it's a diatonic scale, BUT with one important difference compared to Mountain Dulcimers: there's no fret where we would expect the No. 6, but there's a fret at the position we today call the 6 1/2. I think, that makes a lot of sense, when you play in 1-5-1 (or 1-5-8) tuning, because you get a major scale starting at position 0 (the empty string) and have the major 7th at the right place.

I decided to install both frets, the 6 and the 6 1/2, because fret No. 6 is very useful in case I'd decide to use a 1-5-5 tuning (like DAA), because then my tonica / base tone is in fret No. 4, and then I need the half step between fret No. 5 and 6.

Nice piece of work there Peter.

Ouch! Never mention the hat ;-)

I am interested in some details. In what tuningare the stringsset and why? I just looked in Ulrich's book about the hummel and couldn't find any info about it, or I mayby Ihave over looked it.

Nice noter work

Peter, this is totally WAAAAY cool!

I'd love to hear it played in a minor tuning, all spooky-like for Halloween....