As one of our most recent additions to our Roosebeck Mountain Dulcimer line this Grace model has many great features! Its vaulted fret board makes it lighter and as a result there is more soundboard vibration and excellent sound quality. It has an hour glass shape and its body neck nut bridge and fret board are solid walnut. Its tail piece has a silver color and is shaped like a crown. The soundboard is spruce and has a charming walnut skirt design on both ends as well as 4 of the classic f-hole openings. This model also features 4 mechanical geared right angle tuners with a 14:1 ratio and has 4 strings including 2 melody strings 1 middle string and 1 bass drone string. Many tunings will work but we recommend the traditional DAD method to make it easy to pick up and play. The following accessories are included with pick noter and owner s guide. Traditionally mountain dulcimers had three equally spaced strings: a melody string a middle string and a bass string. Later developments created a 4-string dulcimer by changing the string spacing and doubling the melody string. Doubling the melody string created greater volume to the melody line. Contemporary dulcimers such as ours include extra notches on the nut to allow more personalized string patterns. The inside doubled melody string can be removed completely to revert to the traditional 3-string set-up. Most early dulcimers had a strictly diatonic scale; that is the frets were placed so as to produce a major scale (do re mi fa so la it do) with no extra half steps. More recently dulcimer players have found that the placement of an extra fret between the 6th and 7th frets and between the 13th and 14th frets allows two things; (1) a major scale can be produced starting at another point (on the open string) and (2) most songs containing accidental notes can be played. The disadvantage is that it takes a while to get used to the extra frets if you have been playing a dulcimer without it.