Description

A really great hammered dulcimer! From Songbird’s website…

“We believe the 16/15 Phoebe is the best sounding, most reliable, full size entry level hammered dulcimer on the market today. The top and back are of a high tech laminated material called Baltic Birch which is made in Russia. It is 7 thin plys of solid Birch with almost no voids, and is ultra durable and stiff…. perfect for the application. There are few other panels in the world that would work under the tremendous string tension of a hammered dulcimer, and most of them are unreasonably priced.

Since the material is so solid, it makes this dulcimer stay in tune better than almost any other instrument we have tried. For the beginner, tuning is the most daunting obstacle, not really difficult, but at first it seems so. If the dulcimer is out of tune, it is unpleasant to play, and if tuning it seems like a big project, one sometimes gives up, and just doesn’t play. Our theory is that a dulcimer that is in tune gets played more, and the player makes much faster progress. Learn to play first, and tuning will become easier with time. We have proven this theory over and over having introduced many thousands of people to the dulcimer with our instruments. This is why we strongly recommend the 16/15 Phoebe to most folks interested in the hammered dulcimer, especially those that aren’t already accomplished on other instruments

Bridge on a Phoebe dulcimer from Songbird.
But the Phoebe isn’t just for beginners. It is good enough to do almost anything musically a dulcimer player might want to do. Unless there is a specific reason to use a different instrument (like testing out some experimental dulcimer in public) I am always playing some version of the Phoebe or other for all the right reasons. They are durable, stable, sound great, and are utterly reliable.

All of our instruments are designed to have a “middle of the road” sound. They are realtively low “sustain”, but with enough of that brightness to sound good like a hammered dulcimer should. They work equally well playing fast fiddle tunes, or slower hymns in church. An instrument with high sustain will start to sound “muddy” when playing faster melodies, the notes will muddle together until it is hard to hear clearly. However these same dulcimers can sound wonderful when playing slow melodic songs. On the other hand, a very low sustain dulcimer can work just great for fast songs, but sound dead on slower ones; there’s too much space between the notes. All our instruments are designed to work equally well in all situations. They are not a compromise, but we firmly believe we are making the best hammered dulcimers money can buy.

So unless you decided for some reason you wanted a different dulcimer later, like you wanted a Chromatic dulcimer, or you wanted more decorations, you might never need to get another hammered dulcimer. This is the one model that we really believe will last into the next century. Your grandkids could be still playing and enjoying it. It is that good.

The Phoebe is 42″ long, 19″ wide and will weigh about 17 pounds.”

It comes with hammers, gigbag, stand and tuning wrench.