(206) 634-1656

(206) 634-1656

PLEASE READ - our COVID-19 status

To our Dusty Strings community,

Following ten weeks of working as best we could from home, we have been back in the workshop now since June, and are relieved to be doing what we love, which is building instruments! We have really appreciated everyone's patience so far, and we hope you'll continue to be patient with us. Our first priority has to be the health of our employees and our community, and we are carefully following all of the safety practices recommended and required by the state of Washington. Within those limitations, we are doing the best we can to answer the phones and to respond to orders and emails as quickly as possible, and we're grateful for your understanding if it takes us longer than usual to get back to you!

String & Accessory Orders

We should be able to fill most orders for strings and accessories within a few days. At this point, we don't expect any significant delays, but we will let you know if we think it will be more than a week before your order ships.

Mail Service Disruptions

The mail service has been slower and more irregular than usual in recent months, and we are seeing huge variations in how long it takes a package to arrive, and even how long it sits at the post office before it is scanned into their tracking system. If your package is delayed on our end, we will let you know. Unfortunately, once we have handed it off to USPS, there is nothing we can do to investigate the status beyond what the tracking information shows. Packages are reliably being delivered, just not always in the normal amount of time.

If you are trying to place an order through our website for shipping outside of the US and you receive a "no shipping options available" message, that means that the United States Postal Service is not currently accepting mail for delivery to your country. We are sorry that we do not have any way to get around this, and we hope you can wait until the situation improves!

Instrument Orders

We have resumed building and shipping instruments and would love to answer questions or talk with you about placing an order! If your dream instrument is not in stock, we can make an educated guess about how long it will take us to build it, but please allow some extra time for surprises. We are still adjusting to our limited capacity and safety restrictions.

We sincerely appreciate your support during these uncertain times. It is hard to be a small business in the best of times, and this is a challenge on a scale we haven't faced in our 40 years, so we want you to know that both your continuing interest and your words of encouragement mean a lot to us!

Hammered Dulcimer Models

All Dusty Strings dulcimers are built with the same high-quality hardware and exacting standards. For more information on the differences between models, try our Dulcimer Finder or detailed comparison chart, or give us a call!

12/11 Dulcimers

Note: As of January, 2021, we have discontinued the 12/11 models. We may still have a couple left, so give us a call if you're interested!

12/11 dulcimers have 12 courses of strings on the treble bridge and 11 courses on the bass bridge. The Prelude and Apprentice have soundboards and backs of laminated birch; the only difference between them is the color. The D10 is made of all solid wood.

Prelude

Apprentice

D10

16/15 Dulcimers

16/15 dulcimers have 16 courses of strings on the treble bridge and 15 courses on the bass bridge. The Overture has a soundboard and back of laminated birch, and the D45 is made of all solid wood.

Overture

D45

The Chromatic Series

Our Chromatic Series dulcimers use a variation on the traditional 5th-interval tuning scheme, which adds chromatic notes via extra bridges or substitutions. These instruments are made of all solid wood with a more sophisticated internal bracing system, which produces unparallelled resonance, clarity and depth of tone.

D300

D550

D600

D500

D570

D650

D670

Piano Dulcimer

The PD40 is all solid wood and has a non-traditional tuning scheme that mimics the black and white keys on a piano.

PD40