A friend, Clyde, has asked me to help him play a mountain dulcimer which was given to his mother "40 years ago." It was made in North Carolina by a rural craftsman and has no maker's name or paperwork.

My own dulcimer has a fretboard 28.5 inches long. Clyde's is about 6 inches longer. Yes, I know I should have measured it.   Its bass string seemed to be very low. (I have another friend who is a piano tuner, and she tells me that low strings do not change much, even when neglected. It was playing G#, so I raised it to A. )

How do I figure out the right way to tune this dulcie? I don't want to go too high and put too much strain on it. But I don't want to tune it to low so it feels listless. It has four strings, and three of them are original, so we can measure their gauges.

On a guess, I went with A-E-E-E for our first session, played it a little while, and Clyde and his family loved it.

I have located the helpful Strothers' string gauge page, but I need to know what notes the maker had in mind so I can use their chart.