bass dulcimer

I've made posts about my courting dulcimer and electric dulcimer.

Well, here is the bass of the dulcimer family.

I began planning out this instrument while I was still at school in Red Wing, but I didn't build it until a couple years later.

The soundboard is sitka spruce, the back and sides are Spanish cedar, and the neck is mahogany.

It has a standard bass 34" string length, tuned to Aa-E-E.

The bass clef soundholes also clearly distinguish it as a bass instrument.

 The "wings", or inner parts, of the lower soundholes have a brace supporting them underneath. I installed this brace after the dulcimer was built. The first time I strung it up I cracked one of the wings off by bowing the low string. The top vibrated so intensely the wings were actually flapping til one just snapped.

All of the binding and seam inlays are fancy pre-made inlay strips I bought. 

They're meant to match the alternating wood pattern on the fingerboard.

 The fingerboard is made of maple and walnut.

 I also did a little carving on the heel and around the strumming area.

The hitch pins for the strings are piano bridge pins. The inlay is abalone and pipestone. 

The bass dulcimer has a piezo soundboard pickup.

The tail and headstock are capped with maple. Like on the electric dulcimer, the headstock also has a really steep angle.

I attached the head with an odd round fitted joint reinforced with dowels. 

It was a really weird way to do it, but it seemed to make sense at the time.

Originally, my plans for the headstock used a symmetric design, and the piece I made for it ended up becoming the tail for my hurdy gurdy.

So in my last post I said I had "hidden" an "easter egg". In a reflection you can see two pieces of my musical instrument collection. One is a zither made in West Germany. The other is a little display of Asian stringed instruments.