Not long ago in Folkcraft News Letter, Richard introduced a “MaxDAD - Standard/Bass Hybrid Dulcimer” with five strings and over four octaves of sound range. It’s very impressive to me, and I thought that would be an ideal dulcimer for me. After having consulted with him, based on his valuable suggestions and kind assistance, I ordered an variant version of the dulcimer, which I call it “Max CGC - Standard/Bass Hybrid Dulcimer”with chromatic fret pattern. While the dulcimer is in the process of building, I ordered this ready-to-ship “Max DAD - Standard/Bass Hybrid Dulcimer” with diatonic fret pattern. It’s beautiful, lovely, and well-made with walnut body, cherry top, and unusual harp sound holes. Its sounds are mellow, rich, and sweet that’s exactly what I prefer. I tune it to the old fashion CGCGC to suit my playing. Most of current music books for dulcimer are for popular DAD tuning. However, to me with CGC tuning to play a melody, the string and fret position are exactly the same as DAD tuning when converting from D major to C major for example. Hopefully, I’d be able to play somethings I like sometimes.
