Handmade Appalachian dulcimer: Lance Corporal Richard Harrison Troughear, 110 Signal Squadron, 2 Signal Regiment

Handmade dulcimer - an hourglass shaped instrument made from wood. Provided with a fingerboard with brass frets; there are traces of cut slots where some of the frets have been repositioned. The strings are set as one pair and two singles, tuned to the diatonic scale. The nut and saddle, supporting the strings, appear to be made from ebony and have been cut to accept the strings. A thick tail block is glued to one end, through which a heavy steel post has been inserted. The strings attach to the post. Four heart shapes have been cut into the plywood soundboard. There is a carved scroll block at the other end which appears to be made from pine. It supports two pairs of brass machine heads with moulded white plastic heads, which were cut down from salvaged guitars. The finished dulcimer was finished with varnish found at the Baria markets just north of Vung Tau.

Appalachian dulcimer made during his Vietnam service by Lance Corporal Richard Harrison Troughear, who enlisted on 28 June 1966 at Sydney for 3 years and served with the Royal Australian Corps of Signals. Assigned service number 2785570, he received a year’s training in electronics at Watsonia, Victoria before seeing saw service in Vietnam between January and September 1969 with 110 Signal Squadron, 2 Signal Regiment.

As part of a 15 member detachment from Headquarters at Vung Tau (nine electronics technicians, two radio operators and three generator technicians), Troughear’s job was maintain and operate the high frequency (HF) radio transmitters which provided the main military signal traffic between South Vietnam and Australia, the other detachments being based at Saigon (the signals centre) and Long Binh (the receivers).

Troughear wrote in 2007 that "we were physically housed in tents in the rubber plantation at Nui Dat with 104 Sig Sqn .... We were rostered on in teams of two on six day cycles - two days on, then two nights on, then two nights off… We slept on the floor of the air conditioned shack [and] Saigon would telephone a couple of times each night to tell us to change frequency." As the two HF radio transmitters (2 x 2 kilowatt STC E513 units with an output of 3 - 30 MHz) were manufactured in 1955, they required constant maintenance. The E513 transmitters are shown at P07120.004.

When Troughear’s team was rostered on, "the transmitters generally hummed along and we would sleep on the floor on mats". With each call from Saigon, they would have to "shut down the power, unbolt the tank coils and capacitor, bolt the new links on the coil for the new frequency, power up, dip the cathodes, peak the grids, watch that the power amp tubes didn’t get too hot and melt. There was always an unpleasant tingle from the metal coils links caused by cross-coupling from the long feeder wires of the other transmitter, which was up and running." The HF radio transmitter shack is shown at P07120.001

Signaller Troughear had a lot of spare time and admitted his time in Vietnam was pleasant but he needed some activity to divert him. Before he’d left Australia, his attention had been drawn to an Appalachian dulcimer which he'd seen played at a folk festival. Making a dulcimer would be ideal. "I scrounged some scraps of plywood from the carpentry shop of a nearby unit and made one from memory. It was pretty poor." He wrote to his girlfriend in Australia ("now my wife") asking her to send over an illustrated book he remembered by Jean Ritchie, an American woman who had saved the dulcimer from obscurity.

By this time, he had interested a fellow signaller Al Pullen (61592 Allen Raymond Pullen, "our generator tech") in making a proper dulcimer from plans. Pullen "found a place that sold solid plywood and varnish in the market at Baria [just to the north of Vung Tau] and we each made an instrument whilst on duty in the transmission shack. Sergeant Shales [48646 David Thomas Shales], our detachment leader, wasn’t too impressed", more for the fact that they had turned the transmitter shack "into a carpentry workshop". The shack was an advantageous location because it had some glue and a hack saw. The tuning machine heads and the strings were salvaged from a couple of old guitars.

The progress of construction is detailed in the slides which Richard Troughear donated to the Memorial at the same time as the dulcimer – AWM images P07120.016 – P07120.024. Al Pullen is shown at image P07120.021; Richard Troughear at P07120.010.

On his return from Vietnam, Richard worked as a biomedical engineer at St Vincent’s Hospital and in the 1970s made two more dulcimers (which he describes as being pretty pleased with, but in retrospect, "were, in fact, appalling"). In the late 1990s, he returned to the making of dulcimers in a serious manner, and now is regarded as a professional instrument maker and makes a couple of dulcimers each year using Australian and New Guinean hardwoods.