The strings of a hammered dulcimer are usually found in pairs, two strings for each note (though some instruments have three or four strings per note). With the proper tools, building a hammered dulcimer can be accomplished in a single weekend. The Salzburg hackbrett, or Salzburger hackbrett, has chromatic tuning and 128 strings. The santur has Persian origins, but is a direct descendant of the qunan and earliest psalteries. Contact us, In the modern music genres of today, there is no doubt the hammered dulcimer is pretty obscure. They provide the dulcimer player with the ultimate in playing experience. While anyone can build a hammered dulcimer from scratch, it does require some degree of precision to ensure good sound quality. If youre looking for quality wood to build your dulcimer, there are a few different places you can go. The Whippoorwill hammered dulcimer offers at full sized, beautiful sounding hammered dulcimer at an unbelievable price. Our 45" loop end strings will not work for this continuous stringing style, but you might be able to use two loop-end strings in place of one continuous string. The santur may have traveled its way over to China the many years it has been around. Schundas model was built with four detachable legs due to its large size. For example, mahogany has a beautiful dark finish that would look great as a soundboard on any hammered dulcimer, while maple impacts a lighted, more cheerful tone. If you're not sure which model you have, you can find it written on a sticker inside one of the sound holes. More on that later! Shorter hammers are used compared to the cimbalom hammers, but not still not as short as those used by the tsymbaly players of Belarus. We ran into too much inconsistency in the wire's strength, and have switched to using .022" PB in its place. When selecting wood for your dulcimer, its important to choose a hardwood that is both durable and tonally resonant. We have two sizes, the one for the smaller dulcimers fits instruments that are 36 1/2 long, 15 1/2 across, 17 along the top rail and 4 thick overall including the bridges. Since a baritone or low-strung dulcimer is sometimes simply a standard dulcimer with thicker strings, I choose not to give the baritone its own size category. It can still be heard in some Cantonese music or the traditional silk and bamboo genre of the Shanghai region called Jiangnan sizhu. Durable Quality in Every Hammered Dulcimer. This chromatic Salzburger hackbrett was developed in the mid 1930s from the diatonic hammered dulcimer by Tobi Reizer and his son along with Franz Peyer and Heinrich Bandzauner. Floofa at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0