Why Homer Ledford Placed his Frets where he did (And he was Right!!!!)

I got an unfinishedMcSpadden dulcimer body from Jim Woods last year as I wanted to build one up with wooden pegs and staple frets. Finally this week I found some time to undertake the project. I plugged the original tuner holes, drilled and fitted 3 x wooden pegs, fitted a tail dowel for the strings and put a couple of coats of Danish oil on the raw wood and started my set-up. Today I made a nut and bridge and started fitting the frets. Originally I was going to use the quarter comma meantone temperament as I really don't like equal temperament for noter drone (equal temperament means that all the notes are equally out of tune ). I had some help from John H who pointed me towards an article on meantone fretting in DPN Spring 2001 but I realised I don't actually have a long accurate ruler! So I decided to string up the dulcimer, tune it to pitch and place the frets by ear using the drones as an audio reference and used a piece of the wire I made the frets from as a movable fret to find the note positions. I placed the easy frets first (7th and 3rd) then filled in the gaps. I did have an electronic tuner but found that the placements my ears wanted to use did not match the tuner (tunersare in equal temperament) so I ignored the tuner and trusted my ears!!!. When I had the first 10 fret in I played a few tunes and thought the fret pattern I'd come up with by using the natural harmonic blend of the scale against the drones looked and sounded very familiar. And I'd ended up with that tell tail first fret sitting closer to the nut than it is to the second fret. So I grabbed myHomer Ledford and played his scale against the one I'd just created. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather - they were very, very close. Have a listen to this explanation and sound clip:

http://k007.kiwi6.com/hotlink/z1sl4pu0j3/Ledford_fretting_Pattern_-_27_jun_14.mp3

So I recon I now know how and why Homer placed his frets where he did - he was using the drones as a reference and picking the sweetest harmony position for each fretted note against the drones. He used pretty much the most perfect natural scale for melody drone playing in Ionian (aeolian and mixolidian work too as they are based on therelative minor 6th and natural 5th but Dorian is just awful ). Of course, you cannot play chords from DAd on a Ledford as the frets are all in the wrong place for that, which is why so many Ledfords are re-fretted by their owners.

I've seen quite a lot written about Homer's 'eccentric' fret layout and how amazed people are that Homer could get the frets 'right' on the guitars and mandolins he built yet get them so 'wrong' on his dulcimers. Well he didn't get the layout wrong - he got it perfect for a drone instrument

Here is a taster of the McSpadden staple fretted walnut 3 string McSpadden project. I've only got as far as 10 frets and it needs a couple more coats of Danish oil but, using the fret placement system Homer used it is already singing sweetly to itself Although I have to say he was more practiced that me at getting them hammered in exactly where you want them!

http://k007.kiwi6.com/hotlink/hgaysmnlvg/wild_Mountain_Thyme_-_natural_scale_dulcimer_-_27_jun_14.mp3