leenia -

I think your "type" must have been a Freudian slip. Exploring the options is usually a good thing, but one has to be ready to expand one's thinking.... (a tweak, without malice)

Although modes are much less used now by many dulcimists, the F-dulcimer (abbreviation for Fretted), the dulicimer, because it is limited to a one or two "keys" with any particular selection of a tuning, can be "Just tuned" more appropriately than other instruments. Changing modes, in just tuning, and limiting the playing to drones and "chords" that are enharmonic with the tuning of the melody, produces a somewhat different feel and effect than just changing keys on an equi-tempered instrument. For those who want to play traditional tunes in the manner of the performances where the tunes originated, some solid understanding and use of modes is quite important.

There are quite a few "old tunes" that when played on "modern instruments," especially when one tries to figure out exotic fingerings so they can "use whatever chords the guitar does," quite frankly sound to me like someone "made a mistake when they wrote that one." The same tunes played "modally" often are quite pleasant.

If you play only with another bunch of rockers, you'll have a difficult time getting them to tune so that "modes matter." If you're adding frets and inventing fingerings to accomodate music that's not appropriate to the traditional instrument, then in the opinion of some you're not really playing a traditional dulcimer. The "improved instrument" doesn't have a separate and distinctive name - yet, and only offends a few; but maybe you should get yourself a tenor banjo. (Note: said mostly in jest.)

There is no reason why you shouldn't play the kinds of music you like, and if modes are not important in your style of play that's not a crime. In some kinds of music, and for some styles of play, they remain quite integral to the music. And understanding a little about them needen't be much more painful than prepping for your 6th grade trigonometry test.

John