Design Philosophy

For a long time we have believed that most hammered dulcimers are too 'ringy'. That high 'zzzzing' that you hear when you strike a string. Now granted, that's part of what is attractive in a dulcimer, but too much is really grating on our nerves. We went through lots of designs in an effort to control tone before figuring it out several years ago.

We discovered, and there's lots of research out there to back this, that a string vibrates two different ways when struck. It vibrates in the familiar wave shape which you can see, but it also vibrates in compression waves all the way from end to end. This compression wave is where the offending zzzing comes from, and once we understand this we can figure out ways to control it and get the sound out of the instrument that we want.

Now the familiar wave form that we see is what produces the tone that we want to hear, the fundamental and all the overtones. These are generated on the side of the bridge that is struck. But the zzzing wave travels all the way from end to end of the string, right over the top of the bridge and the side rods.

You can demonstrate this for yourself by striking any string on the right side of your treble bridge, and listening to the tone. Then strike the same string in the same place while damping that course on the other side of the bridge with your finger. The sound is different, isn't it? This 'zzzing' sound is also relatively unaffected by the tension the string is at. You can actually hear a difference on some dulcimers if you damp the string with your finger between the side rod and the hitch pins where you wouldn't think any tone at all is generated.

There are two ways to get the sound you want out of a dulcimer. One is to control the string itself, and the other is to let the string do what it wants but control the sound the body projects to the world by design changes. We tried the second approach for years, and learned much, but were never quite happy with the results. But after we discovered where the zzzing was coming from we decided to control it at the source.

These are our findings:

• we could use different materials for the side rods and get different effects.
• a wood rod goes a long way toward getting the sound we wanted.
• on some of our dulcimers, depending on how the body projects sound, that we should also put some little felt pieces on top of the side rods. This method is used on pianos for the same reason.
• depending on how much and where we put the felt, we could tune the sound to exactly what we wanted to hear.

But the main reason is that they are a REALLY BAD IDEA sound wise. All of our many experiments have shown us that dulcimers need lots more sound hole, not less, and covering or partially blocking a sound hole always changes the sound for the worse. Dulcimers on the inside are divided up into various sized cavities by the internal bracing. Each of these cavities has its own note that it resonates at, due to its size. It's like when you blow into a coke bottle and it produces a certain note. If it has some coke in it, it produces a different note.

These internal resonances can be tuned by the size and (to some degree) placement of the sound hole. It stands to reason that you don't want an internal note or two that is exactly at some note an important string is tuned to. The dulcimer would be extra loud and full at that note, but the ones next to it would be more dead. We want instruments that are even across the whole thing. So what you really want to do is ventilate all the cavities very well. You'll notice that many of our dulcimers have extra holes in the back for this very reason. EVERY cavity needs ventilation or it will create a dead area. The more and larger soundholes you have, to a point, the more even the instrument will be.

Another personal reason, which wouldn't absolutely preclude rosettes but makes me very hesitant, is my faith in Christ. Symbolism is just hard to get away from. A soundhole of any shape whatever can be taken as a symbol, and more shapes than you can imagine have occult connections which those who are involved in that recognize. It may not have meaning to me, but it does to them, and it says something directly to them which I may not have intended to say.

As a Christian I am commanded by my Lord to abstain from even the appearance of evil, so that's what I'm going to do. Either we won't put rosettes on at all or we'll be very, very careful. The decoration element can't be ignored, though, and we've come up with a couple soundhole designs which we believe are innocuous. These elements can be seen in the pictures of the Bowed Psaltrys.