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PLEASE READ - our COVID-19 status

To our Dusty Strings community,

In order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Washington state has mandated that all non-essential businesses close their stores and offices so that Washington residents can stay home as much as possible. During this time, we will not be in the office to answer the phone, but some of our staff are able to work from home, and we will be as available as possible by email. We look forward to staying in touch with you, and appreciate your patience if we are slower than usual to respond to your questions!

String & Accessory Orders

We know that music may be essential for many of you to get through this period with your sanity intact, and we are doing our best to ship what we can, while adhering to the guidelines for isolation. We should be able to fill most string orders, and can ship a number of other small accessories, but our capacity and supply are limited. You are welcome to place online orders during this time, understanding that your card will be charged, and that, depending on the items ordered, it may be several weeks or even longer before we are able to ship them. We will communicate with you if your order is delayed, and once it is safe to go back to work, the orders that were placed earliest will ship first.

Instrument Orders

If you are interested in a harp or hammered dulcimer, please contact us by email! We are not able to build or ship instruments in an isolated way, but would be happy to answer questions and offer guidance, and can put you on a waiting list to get in touch with you when we are back up and running.

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 orders and your words of encouragement mean a lot to us!

Quarantine Showcase

Much as we would love to, we don't normally have the time or capacity to take photos of individual instruments, so part of ordering an instrument long-distance is accepting that it will have its own unique appearance, and won't be exactly like the one pictured on our website. But while our whole routine is off and our store is closed, we thought we might take this opportunity to do something a little special and showcase some of the more unique instruments we have in stock. Now is your chance to fall in love with and adopt a particular harp or dulcimer that you love the looks of, and these are all available to ship as soon as our stay-at-home order is over. (Exactly when that will be is still up in the air, unfortunately.)

Crescendo 34 with Camac levers

SOLD! $3620 (stand included, case sold separately)

This Crescendo has a gorgeous, rich, dark red tone and a slight bit of curl on the back!

Allegro 26 with Camac levers and black lacquer

SOLD! $2160 (legs included, case sold separately)

The black lacquer gives a dramatic touch to this sweet and balanced-sounding Allegro 26, while still allowing the texture and grain of the sapele wood to show through.

FH36S in maple with Camac levers

$6520 (case included)

Our maple harps have a bright, crisp, clean tone, and sometimes people prefer the wood to look straight-grained and clear as well, but we like wood with character!

FH36S in cherry with Camac levers

$6820 (case included)

It's fun to imagine what this cherry tree might have lived through to result in such interesting grain.

FH34 in cherry with Camac levers and gut strings

$6090 (stand and case included)

Gut strings have a slightly warmer tone and a more grippy tactile feel than nylon strings do.

FH34 in figured cherry with Camac levers and abalone soundboard inlay

SOLD! $6820 (stand and case included)

It looks as warm and sparkly as it sounds!

FH26 in highly-figured cherry with Camac levers

SOLD! $3260 (legs and deluxe case included)

It's not often we see such a stunning example of natural beauty as this piece of cherry wood! (Oh yeah, and the harp happens to sound fabulous too.)

Allegro 26

$1895 (legs included, case sold separately)

Sapele wood often has a fairly uniform appearance, but occasionally we get a harp with some fun darker streaks or stripes.

D570 with bird's-eye maple rails and pinblocks

This D570 is one of a very limited edition featuring densely-figured bird's-eye maple rails and pinblocks. We haven't decorated a dulcimer like this since around 1980, but we ended up with a small piece of bird's-eye, just big enough for a couple of hammered dulcimer sets, and decided to make something special! This dulcimer is available for adoption, and we think we have enough bird's-eye maple to make one more like it, but that's all!

$3545 (hammers and tuning wrench included, case and stand available separately)

If you see something on this page that strikes your fancy, send an email to [email protected], and we'll happily schedule a time to give you a phone call. We can answer questions if you have them, and we can take an order deposit if you decide you'd like to adopt a particular instrument. We know these are uncertain times for a lot of people, so deposits will be refundable (minus a 5% processing fee) if things change in the next several weeks and you decide you can't follow through on your order. We will update this page as instruments are adopted, and will also add more instruments as we are able to coordinate socially-distanced photography sessions.

We know you're going to ask, and unfortunately, we don't have a reasonable way to play each instrument for you, but you can get a good sense of what the different models sound like from the audio recordings on our website. It's true that no two instruments sound exactly the same, but it's also true that Dusties are very consistent from one to the next, and we've watched people drive themselves crazy trying to pick out the differences between two of the same model and wood species!