R.I.P. Farewell, my old noter

Noters. Where would we be without them? Noterless.
Noters are the little sticks we use to slide up and down the dulcimer fretboard to make different notes. In noter-drone style playing, it is this sliding up and down with the noter that yields that marvelous zzing-zzzzingggg! sound we love. It's a silvery liquid sound that, try as you might, you just cannot get by sliding 'finger meat' up and down the fretboard. The way I play, I likely wouldn't have any fingers left if I used them instead of my noter!
Noters come in various shapes and thicknesses and materials. Most common are wooden dowel-like noters. People like to experiment with other noter materials like metal, bamboo, fiberglass, ebony violin pegs, bone, even glass. I have tried steel rods and glass rods, but personally I prefer the sound of a good hard wood noter. A good noter is like fine wine...nutty, silky smooth, with a hint of arrogance. lol!

Here's a picture of a few noters I have. At top is a wood noter...I don't remember where I got it from. Next down is a fat noter I bought on Ebay but I haven't used yet...

The blackish green one is a noter I bought at a dulcimer festival years ago. George Haggerty made it himself, and I think it is fiberglass or some sort of extra hard resin. So far, this noter has been used more than any other I have had, and has held up the best.
Once I was at an old-time music camp-out gathering and was playing in a session with friends, in the grass under the trees. As I packed up my stuff after the session, I discovered my favorite blackish green noter was GONE! I looked everywhere in my pockets and in all my stuff and could not find it in the grass either. I became agitated and some friends began to help me search in the grass. Needless to say, finding a dark green noter in grass is like looking for an egg in a mountain of ping pong balls. More friends helped in the hunt, and it must have been an odd sight. After a long and fruitless search, I finally insisted that they stop and I emotionally had to 'let go' of my special green noter.
Can you guess the rest of the story? Yes, later that day I FOUND the green noter, right in my dulcimer case in plain sight, where it had played its cruel trick on me. Needless to say it would have been way too embarrassing to announce its miraculous reappearance to all the people who had spent all that time hunching over the grass. They likely would have killed me. I said nothing.

The bottom noter in the picture is cool...I was at a craft fair and looked at a wood turner's booth. He was selling wooden bowls, cups, and children's tops he turned himself on his lathe. I paid him to make me some noters from the hardest wood he could get, and we agreed on maple and ironwood, ironwood having been traditionally used for making ax handles. So I wound up with several very hard wood noters that were gracefully turned. The not-yet-used whitish one pictured was made from ironwood.

Three years ago I began using the first of the little group of noters turned by this craftsman- it was hard maple wood. I used it a lot. And then I used it some more.
One day I noticed it was getting grooves worn in it from sliding over the steel strings. These grooves formed a fascinating spiral pattern, and actually made it easier to use since the strings would naturally fall into the grooves and keep my place nicely. There must have been some mathematical formula producing this amazing spiral pattern, but I've always been lousy at math. I kept using the noter.

Eventually I accepted the fact that my lovely maple noter was ready to be put out to pasture. Due to the severe wear all around the string groove area, the tip was beginning to hit the fretboard and frets too much as it slid up and down. It reminded me of the oddly distinctive wear pattern I used to observe on my mother's lipsticks back in the 1960's, during her 'Marilyn Monroe period'.
My old maple noter is now officially retired. One day when I have a second one all worn and ready for retirement as well, I will give them both to my two grown daughters- mementos of the hundreds of hours, hundreds of tunes, and thousands of notes the humble little sticks gave their lives to.

Do you have a favorite noter?