Making — 2022
Hammered Dulcimer
A 4.5-octave chromatic hammered dulcimer in a 19/18/6 configuration: researched, drawn and built from first principles.
- Year
- 2022
- Type
- Hammered dulcimer
- Range
- 4.5 octaves chromatic, 19/18/6
- Strings
- 204 courses — 306 m
- Timbers
- Honduran mahogany, rock maple, birdseye maple, blackwood
- Electronics
- PUTW stereo transducers, K&K Pro ST
The first instrument researched, designed, planned and built entirely from the ground up, and a return: a much smaller two-octave dulcimer was the first instrument I ever built, four years earlier, and started all of this.
This version carries a full 4.5-octave chromatic range, with extended bass notes below it, in a 19/18/6 course configuration. That range is the design problem: 204 individual string courses, 306 metres of string, and the tension they put into the frame, resolved through Canadian rock maple pinblocks, braces and bridges under a Honduran mahogany soundboard and back, trimmed in birdseye maple with blackwood rosettes.
It is fitted for the stage as well as the room: PUTW dual-element stereo transducer pickups into a K&K dual-channel Pro ST preamp.
