Rona, that is extremely cool.   Hate to sound like a nerd about this, but that site I posted with the links to High Zero, is not that far off.  There are several of those musicians who have their own home-made instruments based upon the structure of a Zimbalon/Cimbalon.  Several of them dampen the strings at unusual places to divide the octave into more than 12 tones, so there are some dissonances, but the actual structures some of these players use, look similar to that instrument. 

Harry Partch, invented several instruments, some of which were stringed like that..not to mention his variations on the marimba.  There are some "orchestras" that play his music.

I think John Cage did similar things with dissecting the octave.

Thanks for the info and pics. I'd love to hear the sound....maybe some of the links have that.

Gene