French Carac Dulcimer

A customer brought this dulcimer into my shop last summer, wishing to refret it and add five-star planetary tuners. The choice of woods is not familiar to me, beyond the aircraft-grade maple laminates that were used back and front. This peice shows a number of interesting design features, the most difficult one of which (in terms of photgraphing it) is the fact that the sides are joined to the top and back such that they overlap the edges of said top and back, rather than being sandwiched in beween the top and back as is far and away the more typical procedure. Too, I've never seen such a nice custom case with a wrap-around pair of zippers!

Note the scalloped, hollow fingerboard: it touches down on two feet at three points along the soundboard, flies free under the picking area, anchoring at the heel. I once saw a similar dulcimer that had been electrified by placement of a slim Barcus-Berry transducer in that very slot, under the picking area. This model has smooth, even tones but is not very loud, as one comes to expect from hourglass-shaped dulcimers.

Here is a closeup of that scallop detail. Note the vertical grain of the sides and the lap joints.

Do you know of an odd dulcimer? I'd love to link to it.