In 1713, the German composer and music theorist Johann Mattheson published a book titled Das neueröffnete Orchestre (The Newly Revealed Orchestra). It includes commentary on individual musical instruments, with remarks about a harp, a hybrid harp-zither, and two hammered dulcimers, in immediate succession:

The pleasantly buzzing David’s harp [“Davids-Harffe/Harpa”], with its gut strings, is fully suited to accompaniment and its merit won’t be questioned; if only there were more who wished to make it better known. The harsh harpanetta, [“Harffe/‌Harpanetta”] with its attendant long fingernails, has already been given its honest farewell. The frivolous hammered dulcimers [“Hackbretter”] should be nailed to the walls of houses of ill repute, except for the large gut-strung one called a Pantalon, which is highly esteemed.

The David’s harp was a double-strung chromatic instrument, with a “bray pin” at the base of each string causing it to buzz. The comment about fingernails with the harpanetta suggests that it was the wire-strung arpanetta demonstrated below. This can be seen as a harp with a soundbox between two parallel stringbeds. In more rigorous analytical terms, it is a wing-shaped zither strung on both sides, played in vertical position.

Hammered dulcimers were and remain in widespread use, in a range of configurations, also labeled with the word stem “cimbal.” They are wire-strung zithers that, by definition, are played by striking the strings. The same instruments can also be plucked, and in cases where that is the predominant technique, are commonly called psalteries (or some variant of that term). The pantalon was an exceptionally large hammered dulcimer with two stringbeds, strung with metal and gut.