2025 Recap and yet another path forward

As with last year's recap I want to thank you for your continued support of my charities. Total charitable donations have grown to just under $10,000, which is fantastic. In addition, I have begun to suport serious professional artists who could benefit from a professional quality dulcimer. In 2025, $4025 worth of instruments were made available to three musicians to further their pursuit of the mountain dulcimer and I am anxious to hear the amazing music that will result. I will keep you informed as this story unfolds.

Production of the Hybrid line of dulcimers was hampered by printing problems. I suspect that the formulation of the PLA material that I use changed and I was not able to consistantly get bodies that I was happy with. I have been working on a new 3D printer that should overcome these issues. This new printer will print bodies horizontally rather than vertically, which will solve some problems, but may add a few new ones. Getting and keeping a massive 34" wide print bed flat and level within a few thousandths of an inch won't be easy, but I think it is possible. Wish me luck.

Luthiers are faced with the challenge of evaluating and documenting changes to their instruments. A few have embraced technology to assist with this problem. It's now possible to send an input to the instrument and record its response. Further, you can break down the response into very discrete frequency bands for analysis and comparison. In a former life, I had considerable experience utilizing FFT analysis for design optimization. I have long wanted to apply it to my dulcimers and to that end I have recently purchased a host of electronic equipment that will allow me to "see" the sound eminating from my instruments. I am hopeful that this approach will lead to some interesting and exciting discoveries. If suscessful, I will be able to more accurately reproduce and describe the sound of a particular instrument. It will also be possible to show the difference in sound resulting from the use of various woods and better analyze the results of new designs in terms of both volume and tone. It will take a while to find the best approach to collect data and build a data base, but the potential to reach a new level of understanding should make it worthwhile.