During my recent vacation in North Carolina I was encouraged by my wife Maddie to stop by a store called Song of the Wood which is located in Black Mountain, NC. So on our way to Asheville we decided to stop by the store and take a look at some hammer dulcimers.  We had intended to stop by the store then go have lunch, well we ended up spending 2 hours in the store and I ended up trying out every dulcimer in the store (I was like a kid in a candy store). At one point I was surrounded by dulcimers looking for the perfect one. I kept coming back to the sound of one particular dulcimer that just sounded incredible. Watch the video below to hear the sounds of this beautiful instrument.  I plan on using the dulcimer in both the writing process and recording of music for The Reverse Engineers. I'm in the process of setting up a home studio for myself that will allow me to record the dulcimer and then send the tracks to Bill and Chuck. 

The hammer dulcimer in the video is the 15/14 “Sapelli Pioneer Package” which is handcrafted by Masterworks.  The Masterworks website states that following regarding the soundbard: "solid vertical grain Sapelli wood. Sapelli is known to be very similar to Mahogany. It is somewhat harder and heavier than Mahogany".

I hope you enjoy the video, it was filmed one week after I bought it. I'm still learning how to play it and I'm finding it to be a very meditative and inspiring instrument to play.

-Dan Cote
Drummer of the Reverse Engineers