Jay D Byrd

I've been mucking about building somewhat similar diatonic fretted instruments with necks. I tend to use a longer VSL similar to the mountain dulcimer. I started out building using cigar box guitars that I set up as stick dulcimers. Then I built a something more like a stick dulcimer but with a resonator which I liked, but as a beginner, it's got a lot of mistakes to be rectified in later builds. I've been side tracked by what other builders call "Appalachian Git-fiddles", basically a fiddle with the neck replaced by a longer one. This one is still a work in progress as I work out a few i

What's the consensus here about stick dulcimers? I'll fess up that I find them very interesting. I'm not talking so much about the Merlins, but the ones with the oval bodies, long diatonic necks and the standard mountain dulcimer string setups. Enough so that I've been messing around building this thing in my spare time. I'm not sure what to call it yet, but it's a large cigar box with a 27" scale, 4 strings with a DAD tuning and a resonator cone. Still to be installed are the frets in a diatonic tuning with 1+, 6+ and 10+ frets. Along with a standard electric pickup and an internal piez

I was an ED member about a decade or so ago. Never did get real good at the mountain dulcimer (what I grew up hearing called "hog fiddles"), but I was having fun with them no matter what everyone else in the family had to say about my playing. I took a break from them several years ago and I've recently found a rekindled interest in them. I've been toying around building cigar box guitars, but never learned to play the guitar which has got me to thinking about building a dulcimer. At least then I can play what I build (although I'm pretty rusty on the dulcimer). Anyway, if yall don'