Folkcraft® Northern Cherry Hourglass Dulcimer Kit

Pricey. Nicely engineered. Nice pieces of stock. No kerfing included. Tuner bars longer than the headstock notch after finish sanding. No tuner bar grommets included.

This was a great purchase, timely arrival, very good condition, beautiful wood. Hubby is having fun building the dulcimer.

It is hard for me to review this kit because I built a custom instrument from parts of this kit. While the directions are short and partially pictorial, if you follow the directions, do some outside research and look at examples you can build a beautiful instrument from this kit. The wood selection is good and book matched parts are nicely selected, and the peg head is finely machined. The key here is everything is made of SOLID WOOD, there are no laminated or plywood parts.
I made several requests when I ordered my kit.
1. I wanted a longer scale length, so Richard was nice enough to send a fingerboard blank and fret wire instead of a finished board so I could make the scale I chose.
2. I wanted 2 1/4” tall sides. Again the good people at Folkcraft made changes and substituted parts.
No other “ kit” is the quality of this one. And building this kit can allow enough experience to build a more intricate instrument the next time. My instrument came out exceptional and sounds Amazing.

As a luthier, I cut ant resaw a lot of wood. This saves me hours and hours and the quality is awesome. Easy to build and with just minimal finishing skills these kits can produce a wonderful instrument.

I called in with some questions and I was helped big time. Folkcraft is a great company and they bend over backwards to help. I can’t recommend them enough. Great people and great products at a very good price.