John Henry, I'm certainly sorry about your fall, and I'm not surprised that not a note was missed from John S and Geoff B. Glad the fiddle edges proved to be practical. I'm a sucker for them on dulcimers!

Dana, Carrie ! thanks for the thoughts ! Should you backtrack a few of my vids you may notice that I was playing for a while with my wrist strapped up, and I had bruises of the most fantastic colouration, ranging thro' poplar, osage, purpleheart, to ebony in all sorts of places (private viewings were available ! ) When the incident occurred I went straight into the house, boiled a kettle, steam heated the bowl of a spoon and with a damp tea towel was able to almost completly lose the really deep indentations in the fiddle overhangs of top and back , they can be seen if looked for, but the sharp arris of the concrete pond surround could have inflicted a lot more damage were it not for those overhangs !

(such is the dedication to their music, neither JohnS or GeoffB missed a note thoughout the occurrance !!!)

John

?Roadhouse?

Just glad you only got bumps and bruises. No broke bones, and glad the dulcimer didn't suffer to bad.

You didn't end up doing backstroke in the pond then?

Absolutely sure of it John!!! and for the rest of you, NO!, I had not been drinking. Seeing as 'ow we are in correction mode, I sat on a garden chair, the legs of which started to sink into the ground pitching me toward the concrete rim of a garden pond, yes, the dulcimer took priority and I had some lovely bruises to prove it!

John

No 't' - Ahh! I've just correct the spelling - thanks!

Congratulations, Robin. Great presentation, and great sound and playing. One extra interesting thing about fiddle edges: as well as looking beautiful, they can be quite protective of the instrument. I hope John Henry doesn't mind me saying that a few months ago he and one of his dulcimers had an awkward trip and fall in his son Paul's garden. The fiddle edge took the brunt of the impact against a hard surface, and took something of a dent. John is absolutely sure that without a fiddle edge the side/rib of the dulcimer would have suffered significant damage.

Just putting my pedant's hat on for a moment: there is no 't' in Charles Prichard's name!

Another excellent and informative video--thanks for posting!

Robin, I enjoyed your commentary on the Prichard dulcimer. I'm sure Major C.N. Prichard would have been pleased. I love to hear the sound of that dulcimer. I think there are a few of us who would love to hear you play a WV tune

Thank you all for your comments.

I hope that I gave a flavour of the Pritchard dulcimer in the video. It does have a very differnt sound to a Thomas dulcimer and is a long way removed from contemporary instruments.

The tuning I used was 1-5-5. I tuned the dulcimer without a tuner, just using the string tension as a guide, and the instrumentis naturally comfortable around thekey of D with those piano wires. The dulcimer has a surprisingly deep growl

Enjoyed that Robin, it covered just about everything ! I too an a firm devotee of fiddle edges, gives something to grip when picking it up if nothing else, and back in the 1990's I made a few dulcimers with what might be seen as 'sloping shoulders', just liked the look of 'em (used one such for that last video of mine?)

John

Wonderful documentary of the Prichard reproduction. Great playing. Thanks for making this and sharing it with us.

Great playing and tons of information...nice job!

Robin....wonderful, informative presentation. And I can't help but love the way you pronounce Pritchard.....you make it sound so much more elegant than the American-English version!!! Your Pritchard sounds great...it has such a big sound....deep. Sounds like 1-5-5?

Excellent presentation, Robin! I believe you touched on all the features which make the instrument unique. Angeline sounded really good too. Were you in a 1-5-5 tuning?