It's done, Hink's Elektrik Dulcima (my dulcimer) another mod 11/12

[Hink]

a hammered dulcimer gives me an eargasm. yours is real purdy, but i noticed a couple of flaws in the finish

there's more than a couple trust me, but I suspect after this the only person who will look at it will be me. Now hearing it is different story

[Hink]

Wow, Hink. That is a beautiful instrument. Congratulations.

thanx Cordelia

[susiwong]

Beautiful instrument !
Takes some courage to start a project like this.
How do you get along with playing ?
Cheers,
susiwong

[Hink]

the seymour duncan pickups were a failure, I could saved a lot cash had I done this from the start. $7.49 each from ebay, piezo contact pickups. The jacks are on the top edge.





yes I'm stuck with the duncans, but these work good. Where I live using mics is hard because of all the traffic going by, I had to use a gate to almost it's extreme. Now I can record this at will with ease

Susiwong, I'm getting good at playing it my way...the right side isn't tuned correctly, it's the bass side and you only play on the left of the bridge (again the bridge on the right). So instead of typical tuning I tuned them every half step and as you can see for each note there are two strings so I tuned each string a fifth apart.

The middle bridge is the treble bridge and that you play on both sides so that's tuned correctly.

[Hink]

the pick ups work great, but they have exposed an intonation issue. It means repositioning the longer bridge (treble), not hard to do but it will be time consuming.

[robogone]

Tatterdemalion and the junketer
There's a thief and a dragonfly trumpeter
He's my hero

I've stood in front of the painting that inspired that song in the Tate Gallery in London. When I saw it I was amazed that it was nothing at all like the painting I had in my head that the song suggested to me.

[Hink]

Tatterdemalion and the junketer
There's a thief and a dragonfly trumpeter
He's my hero

I've stood in front of the painting that inspired that song in the Tate Gallery in London. When I saw it I was amazed that it was nothing at all like the painting I had in my head that the song suggested to me.

yeah I have a copy on my machine and have studied it in depth, I would love to see it for real though. Actually I think the lyrics themselves were done by Richard Dadd as well (but a poem), I understand the picture is actually pretty small. Queen II is an amazing album, Orge Battle with all the backwards parts for the time is imo beyond huge.

[Hink]

well that wasn't too bad but now if you look at the above picture the bridge between the two sound holes is a little more angled with the top a little more to the right and the bottom is moved to the left. I started by doing the bottom pair of strings (the way I have it tuned C to the right of the bridge and G to the left) I had to move the bridge until both sides tuned. I then put two small push pins in at the base of the bridge to keep it from shifting. I then did the top pair (G to the right and D to the left) once those tuned I put push pins in the top. From there I went to roughly the middle pair and made sure they tuned, there was a slight bow but I fixed it. After that I basically had a section above the mid point and one below of untuned strings, I split each section in half and did those middles, slight adjustments were needed. Then the rest I tuned and they are fine now...what a difference.

The build instructions had no info on setting intonation, all I could find online was it was up to the builder and if the design was wrong it would not be intonated. It wasn't exactly hard to figure out what part of my design could be flawed and it only took about 30 minutes to correct. This sure has been an interesting project and I have learned a lot...like for instance I never want to build another dulcimer