Dulcimers as a Business (or Running Dogs, Part 2)

from his 1975 GAL Convention lecture

by J.R. Beall

Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Newsletter, Volume 3 #4, 1975



I believe that a luthier ought to be able to make a living at what he does, if at all possible.

I build dulcimers in the summertime starting (depending on how I feel after Christmas) February, maybe March. Every year I design and put out a new model, and that’s purely to alleviate the boredom, with also an eye toward improving the breed a little bit. It will last up until fall, maybe September, October by the time I finish building dulcimers, and by that time I’m ready to finish building dulcimers. Then I go on to building other things.

Folk Philosophy

I think to me at least, it seems the important thing about an instrument is that it plays and sounds well. If one spends too much time in decoration, you get into a financial situation where you can’t afford to sell it for the amount of time you’ve got into it. And again, this is my basic philosophy: To build things and build them well, and yet build them fast enough that you can make a pretty good living doing it.

Now, there are probably some other people who’ve built dulcimers fairly rapidly. But frequently you can see signs of that in the inferior quality of the product.