Hammered Dulcimer Side Bridge Question
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2019 4:03 am
Hi all,
I'm just in the process of building a pair of 18/18 dulcimers for myself. I'm building two as I was feeling a little clueless about the Musickit plan I bought, and wanted to try out their bracing plan compared to what seems to be the more traditional tictac bracing system.
To my question:
For the right hand side of the treble bridge, I want to put two short bridges one at the top of the instrument affecting the top two courses of the treble bridge to shorten the course a semitone, and one at the bass end of the instrument shortening the strings a whole tone, in order to fill in some of the missing semitones top and bottom.
Do I need to ensure that these side bridges top and bottom remain on inactive parts of the soundboard to avoid resonance problems and tonal balance so that the sound board is only being driven by the treble bridge and bass bridge?
I am figuring that the top side bridge shouldn't be a problem as it would still be on the extreme edge of the RH pin block or marginally over, so I could add a strip to the pin block under that area, my main concern is the side bridge at the bass end as that would be 2 - 2 1/2" into the soundboard off the RH pin block for three courses.
Or would it be fair to say that that bottom corner of the soundboard is pretty dead, so wouldn't be a problem?
I'm just in the process of building a pair of 18/18 dulcimers for myself. I'm building two as I was feeling a little clueless about the Musickit plan I bought, and wanted to try out their bracing plan compared to what seems to be the more traditional tictac bracing system.
To my question:
For the right hand side of the treble bridge, I want to put two short bridges one at the top of the instrument affecting the top two courses of the treble bridge to shorten the course a semitone, and one at the bass end of the instrument shortening the strings a whole tone, in order to fill in some of the missing semitones top and bottom.
Do I need to ensure that these side bridges top and bottom remain on inactive parts of the soundboard to avoid resonance problems and tonal balance so that the sound board is only being driven by the treble bridge and bass bridge?
I am figuring that the top side bridge shouldn't be a problem as it would still be on the extreme edge of the RH pin block or marginally over, so I could add a strip to the pin block under that area, my main concern is the side bridge at the bass end as that would be 2 - 2 1/2" into the soundboard off the RH pin block for three courses.
Or would it be fair to say that that bottom corner of the soundboard is pretty dead, so wouldn't be a problem?