Sitar

This project has finally come to be. It has been a long desire of mine to produce something not done before; an original design. This is a product of an obsession with Indian Fusion Music, and a fondness of the unique and magical sounds of the Traditional Indian Sitar.

This took almost a year from developing the initial ideas to the final product you will see later in this post. I was fortunate enough to be handed an old broken Sitar by my friend, Samuel J. Dass, a prominent musician who runs his music school teaching traditional classical music and the likes of it. I took it apart to study its construction, bouncing ideas off with Sam himself before settling on the first design.

Mid construction of the first one, I discovered some issues which would deem the instrument unusable, so the first one was scrapped. A few months later after rethinking ideas and methods, I finally managed to come up with what we see here. It’s still not perfect, but this prototype allowed us to determine what worked, what didn’t quite, and what would make it a better playing and sounding musical instrument.

I’m not the type to boast, but man, I am proud of this one, and I think it looks absolutely killer!

Construction is primarily Monkeypod (Raintree), a laminated Rock Maple/Malaysian Blackwood neck with a laminated Rengas/Malaysian Blackwood neck. The stiffness off the neck has allowed the sustain and intonation of the notes to be a huge improvement over traditional Sitars. The thinner, Monkeypod top has allowed the instrument to be far louder as well.

Needed some extra help to set this up, so I had to leave it with Sam for a few days to get that sorted out. After this, I promise never again to complain about restringing or refretting a guitar.,

I’m looking to get this recorded sometime soon after the final setting up is done. Till then, have a great day!