Walking Eagle

The second request, for information about bowed dulcimers has been pretty much ignored. My question would be whether you have considered a psaltery - somewhat more adapted to bowing, and still a very "trad" instrument. In the common smaller (cheaper) sizes, they can be rather shrill, which may account for their "selective" popularity; but larger ones are available that sound quite mellow.

Not a recommendation, but brief info is at Bowed Psaltery Info Page, or for more commercial info, Unicorn.

For instuction, or just to get an idea of what playing one would be like, I'd likely trust Greg Schneeman's video at Lark, not from having seen the video, but from conversation with Greg a few years back - and hearing him play.

The common dulcimer shapes don't give very good clearance for a bow, and an arched "bridge," which would probably be helpful for bowing, doesn't lend itself well to transmission of the sound. In a typical dulcimer, most of the sound gets into the box through the fret you're using at the moment - NOT through the "bridge." Of course, with a bow, you have "unlimited input" available, so maybe that's not a real problem. The suspicion is that if it worked very well, there'd be a lot folk around doing it that way.

John