When did half-width frets vanish? (was: Full-width frets)

[pristine2]

Michael Vickey
http://www.goodfornuthin.com

Hi Michael. I thought you might be interested in the Bill Howard photos of the 1969 Dorogi I just bought. I posted them to the Ann Grimes thread:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24648

Richard

[joe sanguinette]

"traditional mountain dulcimers" it seems to me are in the eyes of the beholder. in L.Allen Smith's " a catalog of pre-revival appalachian dulcimers" there are numerous pictures of instruments dating back to the mid 1800's. many of these have frets across the entire fretboard. there are some that look to be cromatic.

i always added a six and a half fret to my dulcimers. back in the day i was being critized ocasionally as building a non traditional instrument. one time it was from a colorado builder who made plywood instruments with geared tuners.

in Jean Ritchie's forward for the book (now out of print) she talks about the origin of the name "dulcimer" for the instrument. Jean believes as i do, it was taken from the bible in the book of daniel. she also mentions the possibility that the latin word dulci combined with the greek word melos which translates "sweet music" was another possibility.

[strumelia]

"traditional mountain dulcimers" it seems to me are in the eyes of the beholder. in L.Allen Smith's " a catalog of pre-revival appalachian dulcimers" there are numerous pictures of instruments dating back to the mid 1800's. many of these have frets across the entire fretboard. there are some that look to be cromatic.

Most dulcimers pictured in the book have 'date unknown'. Some very old looking ones are dated from the 1920's, 30's, and later. I see no photos of verified mid-1800's dulcimers with full or chromatic frets- can you point them out? Not saying there aren't any, but I'm just not seeing any, much less 'many' known mid 1800's full-width fret examples in the book as you indicate. Could be I'm just missing them?

[Pinetop]

Somewhere between hunch and educated guess: I think full frets became popular after George Pickow started making dulcimers set up that way... Mark

[pristine2]

Somewhere between hunch and educated guess: I think full frets became popular after George Pickow started making dulcimers set up that way... Mark

That's more or less the conclusion I've come to as well, although it was not just him. Add AW Jeffreys and Edd Presnell to the list of people routinely making full-width-fret dulcimers in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

If someone now asked me the question "when did half-width frets vanish?", my reply would be "about 1965."

Richard

[strumelia]

That's more or less the conclusion I've come to as well, although it was not just him. Add AW Jeffreys and Edd Presnell to the list of people routinely making full-width-dulcimers instruments in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
If someone now asked me the question "when did half-width frets vanish?", my reply would be "about 1965."
Richard

That's about the same impression I have.
I realize there are examples of full fret, and even multiple scale fret arrangements around from long ago- they certainly existed. But I'm assuming we are talking in general.

[kwl]

Sure, Richard, it was June 26, 1965. (Grinning, ducking and running for cover.)

[pristine2]

Sure, Richard, it was June 26, 1965. (Grinning, ducking and running for cover.)

Give or take a day or two. But of course some builders produced half-width-fret instruments well into the 1970s. Even a few cheap commercial-looking ones, like this modest specimen now on its way to Tulsa:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0642103690

Of course I've no idea when this was built. There's no label. It's probably not contemporary with the Mel Bay VHS accompanying it, but intuition tells me it was assembled no earlier than the mid-1970s.

R-

[razyn]

If someone now asked me the question "when did half-width frets vanish?" I would ask, "from what?" Mine haven't vanished, either from the several older-than-1965 dulcimers I own, or from the few (slightly) newer ones I've made. Ask an Amish person "when did mini skirts replace those long ones?"

Just as a rule of thumb, high art is innovative, folk art is conservative.

What I said Aug. 12th on this thread would dovetail with the notion that George Pickow's evolving methodology as a luthier in 1965 had something to do with it -- not that I believe that, but, sure -- it's another of those things that were evolving in the sixties.

[joe sanguinette]

i think my post was more along the lines not of when half width frets vanished but of when did full width frets appear and the question was what is a "traditional" dulcimer

it is true that it is nearly impossible to document the exact age of primitive dulcimers but the book pictures a number of pics of dulcimers with full width frets that were clearly made well before the 1950s or 60s.

here is a list of pictures of primative dulcimers found in the book "musical instruments of the appalachian mountains" by John Rice Irwin.

page 66 putnam co. dulcimer
page 67 campbell co. dulcimer (26 frets)
page 68 gourd dulcimer (7 frets)
page 75 n.c. dulcimer (no frets)
page 76 thad bays dulcimer
page 81 sam white dulcimer (documented 1880s)
all of these have full width frets. the placement of the frets varies quite a bit. i purchased this book at the museum of appalatia in norris tn where they have some primative instruments on display. this purchase was made in the 1980s. i do not know if it is still in print.

[joe sanguinette]

whoops! the gourd dulcimer obviously did not have full width frets. i included it to show that older dulcimers often have unsual fret placement

[strumelia]

Well full frets have been around for a LONG time, and there were dulcimers and European dulcimer ancestors with any manner of interesting fret applications far back in time. For me at least, the word 'traditional' tends to imply the norm, and of course there are always exceptions and variations on everything. Look at some of JJ Niles' amazing and perhaps outlandish instruments. Were they 'traditional dulcimers' just because he built them before 1950?

i think my post was more along the lines not of when half width frets vanished but of when did full width frets appear and the question was what is a "traditional" dulcimer

If we are changing the question to 'what is a traditional dulcimer' then the whole thread will be completely different. Maybe you should start a new thread with that question, though there may well be previous threads addressing the same issue in the past here. It's a familiar subject for sure, but I'm not sure pairing it in this thread would be very productive.
Perhaps we should start threads titled "What is folk music?" and "What is traditional music?"..... aaaagghhhh, just kidding!!!