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Stormcase for SAS & SBS sitars

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After a long time looking around I found a very suitable case for the SAS & SBS sitars. The “StormCase™ “, model iM3300. This is a professional safe and secure, lightweight (8,6 kg) but very tough and rugged fiber case. It is dent-resistant, shatter-resistant, virtually unbreakable and also watertight and airtight… and it has rubber handles and wheels!! It is originally made for transport of arms and riffles, but I am a little proud to be able to give at least three of them a more peaceful and non-violent destination.

With this stormcase the project of making these 3 new style sitars came to an end. I compiled some info about these instruments on a new page under “projects”. You can also download the new style sitars pdf brochure.

Double Neck Electric Sitar

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Where will it end ??? “We need a sitar … a double neck actually … with humbucking pickups … and a Floyd Rose bridge … and it all has to function properly.  We need some mock-up renderings by tomorrow and the finished product completed in the next couple of weeks”  This is the phone call that David Hill received some months ago from the production company of Mike Myers’ new movie “Love Guru”.

Read the rest of the story and see some unique photos about the making of this extravagant sitar by David Hill & Brady Milloy at the “12 fret” website …

Jora tar intonation on SAS & SBS sitars

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Many sitars suffer from an improper intonation. Mostly affected are jora and laraj kharaj strings. If you are lucky you should be able to play comfortable on the first couple of frets only. After this, immediately pulling meend to correct the tone becomes a must. It is almost a part of the advanced sitar learning process…!!?

On my electric sitars only steel strings are used. Bronze flatwounded strings for laraj & kharaj and plain steel strings for jora. And this thick steel jora again causes some weird troubles. The intonation is far from correct and has this strange behaviour that the tone is too high rather than too low. This means that pulling meend to correct the difference is extra complex. One can only play a higher note on the particular parda…!!

The solution is to shorten the jora string. This is done by adding an intonation block to the tar daan under the jora. This block needs to be made at a particular lenght. My good friend and fine sitarplayer Bert Cornelis helped me to tune the sitars very accurately. Then we temporarily fixed a small piece of bone under the string to immitate the intonation block and as such we were able to measure its desired lenght. SAS-01 needs 10mm of intonation block lenght, SAS-02 only 6mm and SBS-02 12mm.

Day 68 & 69: The intonation block on the SBS-02 and SAS-02 is made out of a piece of extra hard and strong indian rosewood. The block is inserted into the tar daan and is armed with a short pin into the head to make sure it will not become loose when playing meend on the jora.

On the SAS-01 a small piece of stagg horn is used. It is also armed with a steel pin into the head’s wood. Now these sitars are very comfortable playing on the jora without hardly any correction up to reaching the middle SA parda.

SAS-02, the Jazz Sitar “light”

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Finaly, the third new sitar SAS-02 is also ready. The same Slimbucker™ Jazz guitar pickup, made by Kent Armstrong, as with the SAS-01, Jazz Sitar is used. The only difference with SAS-01 is that on this sitar the taravs and taravbar are not installed. So, I call it the Jazz Sitar “light”…

Continue reading →

The electric sitar, by Coral

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If you google “electric sitar” then you ‘ll find over 200.000 hits referring to the Coral “electric sitar” which actually is an early solid body guitar that sounds like a sitar. Vincent Bell invented a number of electric guitar models for Danelectro and Coral. He designed perhaps the first electric 12-string guitar, and invented the electric sitar in 1967, using it on such hits as “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers, “Band of Gold” by Freda Payne, and “Heartbreaker” by Gene Pitney. See this funny early ad:

Also wikipedia writes this, but it is and remains a guitar, made for guitarists. It is not a sitar, isn’t it…?

Read also an interesting article “West meets East” by Frederick W. Harrison about how the sitar came to be heard in the western pop music.

SAS-02, body finish and assembling

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Day 63: Removing the hardware to be able to finish the body: Sanding with grid 240 & 400 followed by 2 x pumice powder treatment, which is applied with alcohol and shellack. Ultimate finish counts 4 layers of Danish oil subsequently rubbed with 000 steel wool and drying periods during the following days. Continue reading →

SAS-02 also with soundholes

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Day 61: Started with sanding the body with grid 80 & 150. Then making and fitting a tar dan out of extreme hard Indian rosewood.

Day 62: Making a new ghodi on walnut wooden feet, and fitting a chrome tailpiece and the main machine heads.

Fitting the (5) main strings on the sitar body and tune them for a test. And then the same exciting decision: drill soundholes, or not …?? So again, first I made a short recording with the closed body. After the delicate surgery I recorded in the same conditions and distance to the microphone.

The soundholes

Play the sound WITHOUT soundholes

Play the sound WITH soundholes

The recorder again registered a gain profit of +8 dB. And also again the low frequencies are much better and more in balance with the rest of the strings. This confirms the same result as when creating soundholes on the SAS-01 for the first time. The overall sound is very similar to that sitar.

SAS-01, The Jazz Sitar

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Day 60: Same story as with the semi-acoustic guitar avatar. Many archtop guitars are equipped with a decent pickup. So, I choose to try on this sitar a very slim but warm sounding pickup model Slimbucker™ Jazz made by famous american pickup maker Kent Armstrong.

This sitar sounds very natural, with extra warmth due to enhanced low frequency response. The pickup is tilted to meet the cikaris and adjusted between the taravs and playing strings to balance the taravs response. (Hit the picture)

Specifications of the Slimbucker™ Jazz guitar pickup:

Alnico bar magnet / DC = 8K / humbucker made by Kent Armstrong.

Size :   0,95cm (.375”) thick – 6,8cm (2.68”) long – 2,8cm (1.10”) wide.

SAS-02 body completed

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Day 57: Back to body 3: Glueing the neck front plate and tabli to the body using hot glue. Another delicate job…

When glueing the tabli, I used profiled plates to keep the klemsia’s in place. This works a bit more comfortable in stead of using a rope.

Day 58: After sufficient drying, I started carving the heel and backside and finished roughly sanding the body sides.

Day 59: Sanding the backside of the neck, making it nicely round and fluently connecting to the heel. The rest of the day I spent on further sanding the whole body with grid 80 and 150.