CHAPTER 4: Dulcimers in the British Isles since 1800 > 'British' dulcimers 1800-1945

Paul Hasluck, How to make and play a dulcimer - 2 of 2

Many points arise, but chiefly these:

• the tuning is that now only used in East Anglia, quoted in Design and Work, in 1877, and also given by Pulver in 1923;
• steel and brass strings are used;
• the instrument has chessmen bridges which have actually been moved out of alignment on the treble side - though not on the bass, of course - so that the instrument may be labelled as of type zy.2;
• and the idea of using each beater twice in succession where possible is certainly not normal, and in most passages is rather inefficient.

The stringing is 20 ^IV + 20 ^IV.

Reading of the overall thoroughness with which one was expected to tackle everything, one wonders if a reason the dulcimer declined in popularity after the 1930s was that, in an era when the pace of life was being felt to accelerate rather rapidly, the tuning and practice of a dulcimer were still expected to be very time-consuming activities.