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So I recently acquired this little brown Luna parlor guitar. Cheap - but a solid top, light as a feather, plays well and sounds pretty good. And yet, I desired something similar to a mountain dulcimer after playing a dulcitar (strum stick), but with far better tone....

Conversion was easy.... I added 3 steel pins between the bridge pins and the bridge saddle, crossed the strings behind the pins, and cut a few new nut slots to match up my pairs of strings (.034, .022, .010). Took less than an hour at a leisurely pace, and I can quickly restring it as a guitar if I so desire.

Here's the result - plays easily, plus minor voicings, and sounds a ton better than a mountain dulcimer.

http://s588.photobucket.com/user/studem ... sort=3&o=0

Played it for a hour, my fave new toy.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Interesting contraption.....

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

That looks pretty cool. What is the tuning you are using? Do you have photos of the bridge and the nut? I think I get the arrangement at the bridge, but I'm not sure.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Standard mixolydian tuning - DD-AA-dd....
See what I can do about some detail pix.

At the nut I used two of the existing slots, adding four more.
At the bridge, added three .125 pins to set the paired spacing.

It's essentially a convertible - from guitar, to dulcimer, and can go back again.
In either mode, it still has six strings...

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Bridge detail...
http://s588.photobucket.com/user/studem ... sort=3&o=0

Nut detail...
http://s588.photobucket.com/user/studem ... sort=3&o=1

Should be obvious now what I did. The pins are 3/8" long sections of 10 penny nail, used a cutoff wheel and a Dremel.

Having loads of fun with this thing.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks a lot for posting the photos. Both of those were what I was guessing, but cool to see it confirmed. That's a great idea for the bridge. Who knew that a 10 penny nail would provide proper string pair spacing like that?

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

You do have to pay attention when stringing it up. What would normally be the A string goes to the low E tuner, what would normally be the E string goes to the A tuner... And so forth.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Nice! About a dozen years ago I made something similar but nowhere near as nice. I used one of those ultra-cheap import classical guitars that was laying around. I used steel strings DD AA dd, it was fun while it lasted (the neck was not really up to the challenge). It was a strange/interesting sound. Not at all dulcimer like in timbre, basically sounded like a guitar in alternate tuning (go figure) but the drones sounded great. Unfortunately the double course D and A kinda drowned out the melody. For a while I had the low D and A strung with octave pairs, that was interesting in its own way too.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.