Greg's Music And Geek Blog

Quick Links

Back To My Home Page

September
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
         
30

2006
Months
Sep


Links

Here's a few of my favorite sites to visit:

Penny Arcade
The Soundhole
Banjo Hangout
Luthier Forum
Everything Dulcimer
Slashdot
Java.Sun.com
Mandolin Cafe

 

Sat, 30 Sep 2006

A Cool New Dulcimer and what’s wrong with EBay?

I’m building a very nice dulcimer for a customer from Cocobolo wood which is, in my humble opinion, the holy grail of musical instrument wood with the possible exception of Brazillian rosewood.

Here’s a photo of the resawn piece of wood that will become the back.

Here I’ve wiped some alcohol on the wood to show roughly what it will look like with some finish on it.

And another glamour shot of this beautiful wood.

And here’s a top down shot that will show how the grain will lay out on the back.

The fretboard is laid up. It’s a bocote base with an ebony fingerboard divided by a veneer of maple.

Why the veneer of maple? Because it gives a fine white line between the two different colors of wood.

Here’s an example of what a dulcimer looks like with a bocote base for the fretboard, the maple veneer, and then a purple heart fingerboard . . . 

 . . . and yet another view that shows off the bocote.

But what’s wrong with EBay?

I put 2 Tenessee music boxes up on EBay for only $150 and neither of them sold! Only $150 for an instrument!? Is that too expensive??? I re-listed one at $130 and it finaly sold.

So then I put a BEAUTIFUL walnut dulcimer up for $325 and after listing it twice it still didn’t sell. Now it’s back up there again at only $300 and I don’t have a single bid. I really hope that SOMEBODY buys this instrument. It’s really quite nice.

So I had hoped to expand my reputation by selling on Ebay. I had visions of placing a beautiful hand made instrument on EBay, people would swoon, hearts would break, Dulcimer players worldwide would rush to their computers to bid on this piece of beauty . . . 

 . . . and nothing happened.

<sigh>

So we’ll see if it sells this week. I just can’t believe that only $300 is too much for a hand made dulcimer.

Stay tuned.

This story is from the [/music/lutherie] department
permanent link