The Virginian

Excited about finally getting to start on my newest dulcimore design this week. I appreciate David Bennett letting borrow his book to collect the final bit of info I needed. I've spent the better part of 3 years researching the average length, width, height, vsl and number of strings of Virginia dulcimers. So with over 200 examples I figure I have enough information.

The Virginian will have:
24 inch vsl.
7 inches wide.
30.5 inch long body.
2 inch tall sides.
D-tailpiece.
Fiddle fine tuners.
3 string standard or 4 string unison tuning.
Double back.

Even though the information I gathered shows around 65 percent were 4 string I still wanted to offer 3.

Granted, the only thing from the Galax dulcimers I'll be using is the double back. I wanted to include something from the Galax dulcimers but other than the unison tuning and double back I didn't want the scale length nor width included in my averages. And, as most of you know, I have a very unproven theory that the unison tuning is much older than the Galax player era.




Photos hopefully within a couple weeks!