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Permalink Reply by Rob on February 20, 2010 at 11:13am

Tim

I use a scale length of 680mm from zero fret to bridge and put on 12 frets total so that would be 0 2 4 5 7 9 10 11 12 14 16 17 19 I think. I use the stewmac.com fret calculator (its under free info section / fretting) that allows you to set the instrument to dulcimer and the scale length and it will give you the fret measurements you need without worrying about what to leave out. They include the 6 1/2 fret (tenth fret chromatic) automatically.

This setup sounds great tuned Dad with loop end banjo strings - .020W / .013 / .010 (basically the full set minus the two .090). I bought a strum stick dulcimer online and that is what eventually got me into building. Every build so far sounds far superior to the one I bought. Hope this helps out.

Rob

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Permalink Reply by Roger Morin on February 20, 2010 at 1:31pm

http://mysite.verizon.net/reswu3fu/tinyguitars/
This is for tinys guitars, his name is Jay and he is willing to help anyone and he even has boxes and will build anypart that you want so you can finish it yourself, he also has dulci sticks for sale on his site. Take your time looking at his site some really good stuff there. We also have many others here who have built duci sticks.

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Permalink Reply by John Drake on February 24, 2010 at 3:28pm

Hi Tim, FretCalc is a fret calculator which lets you measure either in decimal or imperial units. It also has an option to calculate and print out the fret spacing for a dulcimer (actually same as guitar with some frets missing - guitar is chromatic 1/2 tone [semi-tone] steps while dulcimer is diatonic full tone steps). It can be downloaded from here.

If you have a look at my home page you will see my second cbg build which was 3 string (tuned gdg) and fretted as a dulcimer. Can still be played as slide in the usual way. So you get the best of both worlds.

Regards, John D

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Permalink Reply by Tim Fleischer on February 24, 2010 at 3:53pm

Thanks John...that's a big help!

John Drake said:

Hi Tim, FretCalc is a fret calculator which lets you measure either in decimal or imperial units. It also has an option to calculate and print out the fret spacing for a dulcimer (actually same as guitar with some frets missing - guitar is chromatic 1/2 tone [semi-tone] steps while dulcimer is diatonic full tone steps). It can be downloaded from here.

If you have a look at my home page you will see my second cbg build which was 3 string (tuned gdg) and fretted as a dulcimer. Can still be played as slide in the usual way. So you get the best of both worlds.

Regards, John D

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Permalink Reply by Tim Fleischer on February 26, 2010 at 4:35am

I could use some advise on what guage strings and tuning to use on a dulci stick. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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