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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>The hammered dulcimer is little more than a slope fronted pentagonal  
box studded with tuning pegs and with two bridges and a sound hole or  
two.

Ah ... must  .... resist ... posting.  No good.  The luthier takes over!  
Pentagonal, indeed!   It's a trapezoid!

> > There are two sets of strings interlaced at an angle and  
> presumably it has all the notes in it's range like a piano.

Or three on some bass instruments.  A pair of trio of strings is called a 
'course'.  The bridges are set at a tonal node so you get a note on one side 
of 
the bridge and it's corresponding fifth on the other side.  Each course of 
strings sounds two notes.

Tuning pins on one side of the instrument hold the bass strings anchored to 
hitch pins on the other side and vice-versa for the treble courses.

There are diatonic hammered dulcimers, John McCutcheon, the most renoun 
player, often plays a diatonic dulcimer.  Normally there are some "black key" 
notes 
but not all of them and it doesn't have every note on every octave as a piano 
does.  That is, one octave will have an F while the next octave will have an 
F#.




>> The hammered dulcimer is little more than a slope fronted pentagonal  
> box studded with tuning pegs and with two bridges and a sound hole or  
> two.

Yes indeed!  But the trick is to make the box so that the 700lbs of tension 
from all the strings doesn't rip it apart before it is up to pitch.

-----------------------------

I played the hammered dulcimer in a Celtic band for a number of years.  One 
gig we were backstage when, after all it being Irish music, the whistle 
player 
passed around a bottle of Bushmill.  The patron of the theater just happened 
back stage at that moment, glanced at me with a raised eyebrow and said, "Oh, 
I 
get it now, a hammered dulcimer player!"


Pentagon indeed!

James   </HTML>