Any active mountain dulcimer players out there?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Treeline
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Treeline

Treeline

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If you had your druthers, what do you wish you could find in a dulcimer that you can't seem to find?

We're talking lap style, not hammered dulcimers.

If we start with the idea that the sides and back would be laminated, the top solid and bound instead of overshooting the sides, and using higher end banjo style tuning machines and a scroll style head, what else? Longer / shorter scale? Deeper body? Onboard pickup? Different modes / fretboard layout? Carved tops? Hubcaps?

Just thinking... :cool:
 
I wish I could find one that made me sound as if I actually knew how to play it!

Mine is a kit-type dulcimer that my wife bought for me from Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO. I think that they also sold them in a literal "kit" that you could assemble yourself. Mine was preassembled, but it's never exactly shone as an instrument. I still haven't found a way to incorporate it into any of my recordings.

I'm sure that it could be a very interesting instrument. I can't say that I've even ever heard one played in a song!
 
Treeline said:
Hubcaps?
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Spinning hubcaps! :D


Yeah. I guess you could really jazz them up, but still, they sound pretty good and they're fun to jam with in their basic form.
 
The one I have is fairly well done, nothing fancy, but it has solid guitar-style tuners and I believe it's all solid woods. I wouldn't mind more frets, but it is a folk instrument after all.

I would like a headstock that flared to the sides a bit so the instrument would hang from a regular guitar hook.
 
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I've got two in the family. My wife played, but has switched to piano and the dulcimers are largely untouched. The wish list is pretty short. I wish she had time to play it. When I "water down" my guitars every few weeks, I take care of the dulcimers, too, and pick the strings to hear that sweet sound. (PBS has been doing fund raising on TV, so they broke out the Joni Mitchell biography. If you watch closely, you can spot her playing her duclimer.)

Of the things you mentioned, the pickup is an interesting idea. The strings and the top have a completely different relationship on a dulcimer than on a guitar, don't they, what with the strings going clear across the top instead of being "connected" to the top by a bridge. So the top doesn't vibrate and project in the same way. I imagine an internal mic and a under-saddle pickup like the LR Baggs I-Beam might be the thing for a dulcimer.

Hubcaps? Only if they are chrome.

It's a "high" instrument, with a relatively short wound string giving it whatever bottom end it has. Maybe that is what you are getting at by asking about more length and a deeper body. (Keep in up, and you'll make it into a guitar!)

I just learned about the Line6 Variax. Could be you could put some modeling in your duclimer. For instance, people sometimes fret dulcimers with slides. I imagine, if amplified, you could get some pretty wild sounds out of a ducimer.

(Are you going to NEFFA this weekend? You could connect with a few real live duclimer players there. http://www.neffa.org/)
 
Pick Up The World has some killer transducers that could fit on the underside of the top and the jack could be right in the tailblock.

You're right about the difference in how the instrument works - it is extremely stiff due to the structural fretboard running the length of the instrument. So the top is fired differently than the top on a guitar. It's more like a music box - you place it on a table and it's twice as loud, like a boundary mic in reverse. It drives the table.

I built one 30 years ago with a short fretboard, long scale and a floating bridge. It sounded fantastic and then blew up. I still have the pieces - that was a really nice scroll that illustrated well the dangers of short grain. Actually, I keep the thing around because there are so many lessons to be learned from it. :D
 
I bought a kit without a body...incorperated a solid maple body and added a neck position tele' pickup. It sounds awsome through my dg-stomp...I play with a guitarists slide by the way.
 
I don't use mine much anymore but record with it now and then. It was made by Rod Wallbank in 1970 and could be the biggest waste of Brazilian rosewood ever. I had it fretted to do a scale. Back when it was new I played it all the time at a little steakhouse....miced it with an EV 664. There was a side door near the little stage a guy from the little lab next door would come in through with new transducers he was working on all the time. He'd stick 'em on the dulcimer and listen. It was Les Barcus.
 
Reminds me of when Leo Fender would put a coil thingy on my acoustic...and we would play it through my record player. :rolleyes: :)
 
philboyd studge said:
I don't use mine much anymore but record with it now and then. It was made by Rod Wallbank in 1970 and could be the biggest waste of Brazilian rosewood ever. I had it fretted to do a scale. Back when it was new I played it all the time at a little steakhouse....miced it with an EV 664. There was a side door near the little stage a guy from the little lab next door would come in through with new transducers he was working on all the time. He'd stick 'em on the dulcimer and listen. It was Les Barcus.
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What a great story!
 
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