WLD

Watauga Lake Dulcimers

Building dulcimers has always been a hobby for me, not a business. Building different shapes and sizes with different scale lengths made it interesting. I started with a traditional hourglass shape. I tried a teardrop shape, but then broadened the bottom and called it a pineapple shape. That allowed a shorter body with more interior volume and soundboard surface area. More recently I tried simple box shapes of different sizes. One reason was to make a functional dulcimer with less material and less building time to keep a lower price. I found I liked playing them as much as the more traditional dulcimer shapes.

I also made quite a few solid body electric dulcimers. A simple design with simple electronics can be a lot of fun with a small amplifier. I have not seen enough of this from other builders. If you have thought of building a dulcimer, this would be the easiest way to get started.

I made a lot of videos to demonstrate my instruments. Rather than organizing them here, I will just point you to my YouTube channel. If you want to browse them click on my picture below.

Morgan WrightI am a retired technical college teacher. I taught in Wisconsin but now live in Northeast Tennessee. For ten years I built mountain dulcimers as a hobby and small business. I play dulcimers, guitar, and banjo. I also like recording and editing sound and video. Videos on my channel will include explanations of my dulcimers and music videos of myself or my friends.

My career background was 17 years as a programmer for an insurance company, and 20 years teaching computer classes at a technical college in Wisconsin. In 2005 I retired from teaching and moved to Butler, TN, near Watauga Lake. For three years I was busy building the house we live in, and two others near our home. The recession stopped us from more building projects, so I had time to practice and study music. I started with a guitar, and then a hammered dulcimer. I learned some things, but could not get to a very high level with them.

In the fall of 2010, I built a McSpadden Sweet Song dulcimer from a kit. Dulcimers soon became my instrument of choice. You can quickly learn to play the melody of tunes on one string, and let the drone strings provide a background chord. When you want to play chords, the patterns are much easier than on a guitar. I soon made two more instruments from inexpensive kits I found on eBay.

In late 2011 I decided to build from my own designs. I started a website and sold a few instruments each year until now. I have some nice wood yet, but I will stop building when it is gone.

I plan to keep this website up to provide information for anyone looking for dulcimers