Comment

Comment by Diane in Chicago on May 23, 2011 at 3:23pm

well, if you have a 23" vsl, your octave will land at 11.5, so you will have a full octave and another fret or two.  That's all I've ever needed on a strummer.  I never play way up the neck, but that might be from lazy habits developed playing the fiddle.

Comment by James Boutilier on May 23, 2011 at 2:05pm

Hi Diane... Yeah, 23 is good, just not sure about 13 inch fretboard.  I thought about a scarf joint, which could give me about 1.5-2 inches...  but if 13 will still give me a decent Open G  diatonic strummer, I'd rather not do it on the first one.

 

Im just a little disgusted at the moment.  I dont know if Ill be able to do it on this tablesaw afterall.

Comment by Diane in Chicago on May 23, 2011 at 1:51pm

I say dryfit the instrument, mark where the bridge should be on the soundbox, measure to where your nut will be and use that as your new VSL.  It can be any length, so long as you place your frets properly.

 

Another option is to scarf join on a head to regain some of that lost VSL.

 

23" is pretty long anyway, you've still got room left to work.  IMHO!

Comment by James Boutilier on May 23, 2011 at 1:28pm

CAN I SALVAGE THIS BUILD ?

 

Hey, So, I bit the bullet with what I had - and screwed up.

 

I got a 1.25" wide x 1" thick x 30" long piece of maple.

Doing the design where you cut two long slits on the bottom end, spread them, insert separator piece and put on top and bottom.

 

Well, don't have a working bandsaw, so tried to do it on a table saw.

 

Did manage to cut 3/16" thick sides (not bad), but... forgot the kerf of the circular blade.  My 18 inch neck (minus peghead) is now 13 inch.

 

So, my question:  With 23" VSL and 10" from bridge to bottom of Fretboard location - I'm left with 13 inches for a fretboard.

 

Is the sound on that going to suck, and can I still get 10-11 frets for a basic 3 String Diatonic Strummer?

 

(also discovered that my tablesaw blade actually tilts away from the wood when pushed through.... crap.)

 

 

Comment by Alan Roberts on May 21, 2011 at 10:21pm

Rand, the light still burns brightly, thanks to you.

If your tabs just have fret numbers, that is easy to transpose. I just put each note (A -- G) above, and go from there,

The chromatic fretboard on my guitar is EXACTLY the same as your diatonic dulcimer, just with a few extra frets (heh, heh). Really, if I handed you my CBG after marking what frets are the same, it wouldn't take you 2 seconds to lay down some tunes.

As to getting everybody in my pub to be in key, that's not trivial. Honestly, there's those who play in a key known but to themselves and cats in heat. But there's those real musicians that I could say "let's play Shebeg Shemore in C" and they would be there ahead of me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qD1-t5Pflw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qD1-t5Pflw

It's late, I will dust off my dulcimer songbooks in the morning.

Comment by Rand Moore on May 21, 2011 at 9:47pm

By the way, I have some chromatic tabs and some diatonic tabs (many are the same songs at these two links on my CBN personal page:

1. Diatonic tabs
2. Chromatic tabs

I have done some more tabs since then, but I haven't gotten around to posting them. I'll try when I have the time.

-Rand.

Comment by Rand Moore on May 21, 2011 at 9:38pm

Hi Alan Roberts,

What I was saying was in the context of the diatonic scale used on mountain dulcimers and stick dulcimers. My musical background is quite limited, and I don't play a chromatic scales instrument very well. (I used to play the Ukulele a bit, but have forgotten how since taking up the diatonic stick dulcimer.) Whether what I said is extendable into the chromatic scale, I don't really know. Maybe it is, but then you will have to somehow filter out all those sharps and flats (half steps) and I think that's too had for my mind to do at this point.

We are talking open tuning here. Tuning in fifths, I believe. If that is how your cigar box guitar is tuned and your mind can filter out all the non-diatonic half-steps on your chromatic scale, then I suppose tabs for any 1-5-8 tuned instrument would work. 

Usually, for songs I like, I will tab the song out for diatonic 1-5-8 tuned instruments (usually trying to arrange the tune so it's melody can be played on one string), and then I do another set of tabs for chromatic. When I do tabs, I write out all the lyrics and then put the fret numbers above each word or syllable of the word. Since the frets are numbered differently on chromatic scaled instruments, the fret numbers that appear with each word (or syllable) will be different as compared to tabs for a diatonic instrument.

As I play the stick dulcimer by myself, the need to be in tune with other instruments has never surfaced. But I can see that if you play with a group of stringed instrument players, being in tune with them will be important, so, you should probably take the time to arrange the piece you want to play so that each instrument will be in the same key. This may mean that some players will have to re-tune their instruments, or use a capo. Again, I'm no expert, so don't tale what I say as gospel. Hopefully, something I said in my last post has lit up a light-bulb in your head, and I hope what I said in the post has not extinguished it.

Sincerely,

-Rand. 

Comment by Rand Moore on May 21, 2011 at 9:15pm

Hi Again, Mal.

Yes, you want to buy what is known as a chromatic digital tuner, which detects and displays all 12 notes of the Western 12TET scale. You can use this on any stringed instrument. With a dedicated guitar-only or ukulele-only (etc.) tuner, they only give you a certain set of notes, typically only the notes for the standard tuning of the instrument. So, yeas, I can see why you might have tuning questions/problems if your tuner isn't chromatic.

-Rand.

Comment by Alan Roberts on May 21, 2011 at 7:04pm

Rand

I've been building instruments for years, but only playing for a few months. So forgive me.

D-a-d is the same family as G-d-g? I can use tabs for my D-a-d dulcimer for my G-d-g cigar box guitar? Holy cats... So if I practice one, I'm practicing BOTH (except the melody string is #3 and 4 on my dulcimer), right? I mean my CBG has more frets of course, but other than that going from one to the other should be as easy as falling off a log.

The big difference would be if I'm playing with others, I'd have to say "We're doing this in the key of ..." Key of what, exactly?

Comment by Mal Chilvers on May 21, 2011 at 5:49pm

bill well was the name on the plans Mal

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