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Comment by John Drake on April 13, 2010 at 12:55pm

Sorry. Posted the wrong FretCalc image with my last comment. It should have been this one, not the one showing three decimal places. Regards John D. PS It seems that the usual 15 minutes after posting a comment to allow for editing does not work. Does anyone know if this facility has been disabled? It was very useful as it would have allowed me to edit the original comment and insert the correct image.

Comment by John Drake on April 13, 2010 at 12:43pm

Here is a copy of FretCalc output for a 650mm scale length dulcimer. You will see that it is basically the same as the one provided by Tinyguitars except that it is rounded down to 1 decimal place. Its easy enough to judge to 1 place but I defy anyone to cut frets with an accuracy of 3 decimal places or 1/1000 of a mm!. Your neck seems to be quite short in the length from nut to body and will probably only fit 11 frets in the nominated 420mm. You must have either a long box or bridge positioned close to end of box. I like to position the bridge about 1/3 of the box length from the end as this gives more opportunity for the lid of the box to resonate.

The following photo is of one of my builds which has a scale length of 643mm with neck to box of 492 (which fits 16 dulcimer frets). Box length is 247mm and bridge is positioned about 95mm from the end of the box.

Hope this all helps. FretCalc can be downloaded here. Regards John D

Comment by Diane in Chicago on April 13, 2010 at 1:15am

There is a whole crazy group about just this:

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/group/dulciworld/forum/topics/fret-sp...

Comment by Roger Morin on April 12, 2010 at 8:34pm

check out Jay at tinyguitars he a member here and builds dulcimers