Sooo,
We ordered the Dulcimer Kit from Backyard Music in CT. My Wife ordered it for me for a Christmas present. Wouldn't give it to me even a day early. She's like that you know… :-( ...She ordered it with the 6 1/2 fret and 4th string. I would like to point out that the folks at Backyard Music were excellent to deal with. My wife communicated with them a few times reagarding the order and we even made a change to the order after I decided that I wanted the 6 1/2 fret. They shipped in less than 10 days and everything was exactly as promised.

Anyway I opened it up on Thursday and after the kids went off to enjoy their new acquisitions, I assembled it, it went together real nice. The instructions are for the most part very good. There are one or two minor issues that I will send a note to the folks at Backyard Music about. I elected to make a couple of minor changes to make the box a little more solid as well. But it only took a couple of hours to assemble it and I think it sounds quite good. I tuned it DAA and within a few minutes was picking out several recognizable tunes in a few different styles. I can qualify saying recognizable because my Wife began to sing along with me…She is like that you know… :-)

One thing I did to help me was to place a piece of tape along the fretboard and numbered the frets. I have some experience with Tabs and the Dulcimer tabs are easy to follow, but the lack of inlay spots to use as reference points cause me to keep stopping to count frets then I loose my place in the tabs.

I find it to be a magnitude easier than the Banjo. I look forward to learning it well enough to do a little entertaining with it in the future. I will defiantly be playing Christmas Carols next year.

Any tips or suggestions from those of you with experience will be welcome...