Building a Mountain Dulcimer Jonathan Smith

Jonathan is building his dulcimer and writing this article at the same time. Neither is ready yet, as far as we know. When the article is ready, we'll announce it on Sweet Music Digest. In the meantime, here are some resources on the topic of building gathered from folks on the Sweet Music e-mail list:

Books
The Mountain Dulcimer - How to make it and play it - (after a fashion) by Howard. W. Mitchell; published by Folk-Legacy Records, Inc., Sharon, Connecticut, 1965.

Constructing the Mountain Dulcimer by Dean Kimball, 1975, ISBN 0-679-20285-4, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number is 74-6536, published by Crying Creek Publishers, PO Box 8, Highway 32, Cosby, TN, 37722. -- This is a fine, fine book.  It's full of drawings, photos, diagrams, etc., etc. There are 20 construction topics, 4 appendices, a supply source listing (of which some are still useful), and a bibliography. JKN

Elderly Instruments has some books on dulcimer building at it's web site.

A VHS tape is available from Burl Updike who runs an advertisment in Dulcimer Players News. Burl's address: RR#3 Hunlock Creek, PA 18621.

Kits
Musicmakers (Minnnesota) 800-432-5487
Stewart-MacDonald Guitar Supply (Athens, Ohio) 800-848-2273.

Note: We have no information about the quality of these kits. But list-member DW says:

I have been building for over 10 years. I've found that some the of kits on the market today are not worth the time and effort. I worked at the Ozark Folk Center and had a few folks ask to put together kits they purchased and had no idea on how to build it. Being a good guy and wanting to help them out, I accepted the job. I wish I never seen one of the kits. It was thin, cheap grade plywood that might make good fire starter. The sound was weak and it looked bad. There are kits that were worth the time and money. I don't wish to call names--that is bad business. Tell folks in the market for a kit to look them over good and ask questions.

As for building instruments from scratch. Every luthier has their own style and ideas. There are a ton of things a person can do to a dulcimer. Trying to build the perfect instrument, I have seen just about all of them at one time or another. Some that were beautiful to look at and sounded like a cat in a wash machine, while others didn't look too good, but had a nice sound. But sound is up to the person. We can not tell a person what they need to hear. They have their own ideas.