"}There are two major differences between the American mountain dulcimer and its European predecessors \u2013 the scheitholt, the langspil, the langeleik, the epinette des Vosges, and so on.
First: all strings are fretted on the mountain dulcimer. The European box zithers tend to leave the lower strings as drones. (This isn\u2019t to say that the mountain dulcimer is never played as a melody/drone instrument rather than a chorded instrument \u2013 it can be, if you put it in bagpipe (Ddd) or Galax (ddd) tuning, instead of the common tunings (DAA or DAd). But the lower strings have frets as well.)\u00a0
Second: nobody bows the mountain dulcimer. There\u2019s some evidence that it used to be bowed, but that\u2019s not done anymore, where by \u201cnot done anymore\u201d I mean \u201cnot done anymore except the guy in the video invented the thing in the video, the bowed dulcimer, as a separate instrument\u201d.
(I met him once. He had apparently built his own guitar \u2013 a Russian-style guitar with seven strings \u2013 and he talked about getting pissed upon seeing guitars that didn\u2019t show evidence that the high frets were used, because, he said, it\u2019s a pain in the ass to put those frets in. He\u2019s right. It is very much a pain in the ass. I wonder if fretboards could be 3D printed without adversely affecting the sound of the instrument.)