First attempt at a stringed instrument.
Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2013 10:20 am
This is my first attempt at a stringed instrument, a stick type dulcimer roughly based on photos found on the web.
Scale length is 650mm currently tuned dad.
Materials are neck beech, sides sapele, back sapele and beech, soundboard western red cedar. headstock veneer yew, and fingerboard walnut, all of which apart from the cedar were hanging around in the
workshop.
It has worked out suprisingly well considering that little up front design occured. The sound is good, low end responce is best it tails off a bit towards the top end but is still quite acceptable.
The biggest problem is that the strings run quite low over the soundboard, meaning that I cannot lower the bridge to give a better action height without reducing the angle over the bridge too much. I could also do with a bit more of an angle over the nut.
I am going to build another more or less the same to correct the problems with the first build, the next one will have the neck angled back slightly and a few other minor changes, then on to something a bit more ambitious!
Scale length is 650mm currently tuned dad.
Materials are neck beech, sides sapele, back sapele and beech, soundboard western red cedar. headstock veneer yew, and fingerboard walnut, all of which apart from the cedar were hanging around in the
workshop.
It has worked out suprisingly well considering that little up front design occured. The sound is good, low end responce is best it tails off a bit towards the top end but is still quite acceptable.
The biggest problem is that the strings run quite low over the soundboard, meaning that I cannot lower the bridge to give a better action height without reducing the angle over the bridge too much. I could also do with a bit more of an angle over the nut.
I am going to build another more or less the same to correct the problems with the first build, the next one will have the neck angled back slightly and a few other minor changes, then on to something a bit more ambitious!