30th Year Photos/#72

2007 National Championship trophy instrument.

It’s always fun to build a new instrument to sponsor the National contest every year in September at the Walnut Valley festival in Kansas.  It’s also exciting to watch the wide variety of players who travel great distances to compete.  There have been a flood of magnificent young players recently bringing exciting new styles and music to the dulcimer world.  Stephen Humphries is one of those great young players.  A fine Christian man off to college now in Tennessee, Stephen hails from Columbia, SC.  We awarded him with a laser engraved Bubinga railed Russell Cook Edition instrument then installed dampers and microphones after the fact.  He uses it primarily for his traveling gigs.