As I wait for my Srishti from Lars, I am wondering what to do with the two sitars i have now. Can anyone fix the following:
student sitar-nice gift from my fiancee's dad while he was visitng family in india. . .arrived with a broken gourd(i have the pieces). a very inexpensive model but maybe salvageable
mid-east sitar-eager to study sitar i got a $250 model. tried to restring tarbs and found that all the pegs didn't fit well into their holes. my teacher said that it was a waste of time to deal with it.
Is it worth getting these problems fixed? And where?! Any Sitar Luthiers in the New England area?
jaym (Aug 19, 2003 11:36 a.m.):
mid-east sitar-eager to study sitar i got a $250 model. tried to restring tarbs and found that all the pegs didn't fit well into their holes. my teacher said that it was a waste of time to deal with it.
I have a sitar I got off of ebay that I think originally came from Mid-East. I too was restringing the tarbs, and had a heck of a time, until someone reminded me that the pegs have to go in the same hole that they came out of. On mine, they were marked with little notches, one for the tarb peg the furthest up the neck, eleven notches for the one closest to the bridge. Once I redid the stringing with the pegs in order, they fit fine.
One caveat, is once you loosen a tarb string, its almost impossible to restring it without getting a kink in the string and breaking it. So be prepared to buy some more tarb strings. People here will say "buy bulk string from fortepiano.com", which is ok if you plan on restringing a bunch, but I go to my favorite, juststrings.com, and bought a couple of packs of 12 strings at about $3 each pack, and got enough to last me for a while. I don't know, maybe they're cheaper at forte, but I'm ok with juststrings.
Check out my topic from a few weeks ago on this board: "Beginners Only - Pro's don't read, I'm already embarassed enough!".
Hi, I do tons of sitar, and other Hindustani instrument repair work, but I have to remind you of one very important factor, a standard sitar that is fixed, is still a standard sitar. There really is nothing you can do to improve standard instruments, sure you can put new pegs in, new jawari, and larger frets, but is it worth it, it just depends on you to make that descision.
Beenkar Ted Ceplina
Billy- I did make sure that I kept the pegs organized when i did this(they had notches). The craftmanship was so poor that the fit was suspect on all the pegs! I had ordered all these coils from Ali Akbar and was excited to restring the sitar and then. . .(insert curse word)
Beenkarji- I understand your point, I guess the question is. .how much would that type of work cost? By the way, where are you located? If the money wasn't too painful then I would do it.
Hi Jaym: One thing to consider is, since these are just "standard" quality instruments, you might want to fix them yourself. So what if they don't turn out perfect. You'll certainly learn from the experience and you might at least end up with an instrument you can use to take to the park, etc.- one that you don't have to worry about getting damaged. I'm looking for a fixer-upper right now for this very reason.
Hi, well I am in Central Wisconsin, but also frequent Chicago a lot. I actually dont charge for the work at all, just the materials, but I leave it up for the owner if they wanted to give me a "tip" for doing the work. Gourd repair isn't so bad if you have all of the pieces, it does take a bit of patience, the difficulty would be refinishing it, but that shouldn't matter because it it easily playable with an unfinished gourd. Well if you are looking for repairs, you can email me, but I am going to assume I am too far away.
Beenkar Ted Ceplina
