recent sideroads

[Soledad]

Lifelong bass player but guitars have been a close second. Always fancied a Tele - particularly fond of the bridge p/u with a bit of scoopy eq and maybe a hint of delay, even a touch of chorus. Very happy with this one, a MIM vintage reissue in faded Fiesta red. The original very white scratchplate has been replaced with a parchment one. Waiting on Strings Direct to get my 10-46s to me (overpriced and slow, one star review for them).

The other thing is a mountain (or appalachian) dulcimer, which I built. Back & sides flamed sycamore, top spruce, board ebony.

It has a nice sound - they are a bit odd. I added 2 frets where the purists don't have them (min 3rd and maj 7th). The trad mountain ducimer is basically fretted for a mixolydian scale if you played all frests up to the octave. It's normally 4 strings in 3 courses, so a double top string. Tuned (most often) DAD so the lower A & D act mostly as drones, with quite a few chords available.

Can be heard on Joni Mitchell - a Case of You and one or two others. Also on the Plant Krauss album - the track 'Long Journey'.

Fun to build, fun to play for a short while. Like when I got a tenor Uke during lockdown. Got bored fairly quickly.

The Tele however, well that is mighty fine and packed full of challenges.

 

(just mention I bust one of top strings on dulcimer, easily done. So it's currently a 3 stringer, which some serious US players use anyway.)

 

[tauzero]

When I was with the ceilidh band, our dulcimer player had a brace of Appalachian dulcimers, tuned to G and D IIRC. Both were six-strings, three courses of two strings. He didn't have those extra frets but he did fret a drone string on occasion.