I'm working on a cigar box dulcimer strum stick type thing at the moment and I'm wondering, what tunings and string gauges do you guys usually do?
--Charlie

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I know most people use DAD and some times I uses aad simply because that is what my dulcimer is tuned to and has been tuned to that for over thirty years now. have tried other tunings on it and they don't sound right to me. and the result is other tuning on my cigar box don't sound right either.
lol guess that make me an old stick in the mud.huh.
Allan
Sometimes the action is too high on a cigar box guitar, and even a tuning you are used to will sound "off", because the high action causes a slight sharpening of each note as you go up the scale. Here in our Tennessee mountains, the "bad" notes may be caused by bad stuff in a Mason jar, or probably the old banjo player next to you had a bad night, and can't find the right notes either. You should realize that a CB player is too cool to be "off".......Richard in Tennessee..
I like D A D
Okay cool. What should I use for string gauges?
I use the 4, 5 & 6 strings from Martin ex lights. But lights would probably be Ok too.

Any idea what guages those would be?

Thanks

Use guitar D, .022 - .026 wound, then a guitar G raised to A, usually about .017-014, the guitar E , .011 - .009, dropped to high d.
Cool, pretty light, my wife would like that, easier on her fingers, Shes got very dry hands. Hard as a rock. Doesn't need a slide

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