A friend gave me a lovely Cedar Creek dulcimer, and I'm putting new strings on it. I'm used to a dulcimer in DAA with strings of 12,14 and 22 gauge. This dulcimer is supposed to play in GDD with strings of 10, 10, and 18.

(It is not possible to put the bigger strings on it, because the 22 is too thick to go through the slot in the nut.)

I've put on the finer strings and tuned it GDD the way they want, but I don't like how it sounds. It's too high and twangy for me.

I tried tuning it to E-B-B, (which is about halfway down) but I still found it too twangy. I have suffered hearing damage, and I'm unusually touchy about twangling instruments.

My question is, if I use the light gauge and tune it DAA, is there any hope that the strings will stay in tune, or will they be so slack that they flop? (The DAA tuning I would prefer is 5 half-steps lower.)

Does anybody have experience with how much leeway metal strings allow? Is 5 half-steps workable?