Stick Dulcimer Pickups

Fitting a Pickup
This is one of my recent stick dulcimers, just a few detail changes that i thought I would share, first the zero fret that is a simple alternative to the standard nut and helps to set the action. Note I use a guitar fret at the zero position and banjo frets for the rest. The other change has been to slim down the bindings to 3.5mm, this still protects edges but gives a more delicate look. To fit a simple pickup and have binding was a problem for me, In theory you could screw the pickup and attach the piezo after construction but the soundhole is small and the room for doing this minimal, so i opted for making the stick dulcimer, routing the binding then removing the back, using the location pins to ensure it returns to the same place after fitting the tailpiece and soldering the pickup. I used an anderson tailpiece and drilled out the tailpiece bracket to 14mm to let it freely slide over it. The endblock was drilled out at 12mm and a thread cutter was used to match the anderson jack socket. I then tested the pickup and glued up the bindings after.