Meet the Maker #4 – Alan Arthur Suits

Meet the Maker – Alan Arthur Suits: Sitar making in New Mexico

Intro

In the Meet the Maker series, I talk to sitar makers from all over the world. People who bring instruments to life with their hands, their ears and their hearts. Meet Alan Arthur Suits.

This episode introduces Alan Arthur Suits, a luthier whose journey spans a wide range of stringed instruments. From Renaissance lutes and vihuelas to sitars and rudra veenas, his work reflects a deep curiosity for both historical and cross-cultural instrument making.

Alan’s path into instrument building did not follow a straight line. Early encounters with medieval and Renaissance music, combined with a fascination for Indian instruments, gradually shaped his direction. Experiences with masters, hands-on learning in workshops, and years of repairing and studying instruments in real-world conditions all contributed to his understanding long before he built his first sitar in 2007.

Profile

  • Name: Alan Arthur Suits
  • Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
  • Active since: 1974
  • Speciality: Lute, Renaissance Guitar, Vihuela, Oud, Sitar, Rudra Veena
  • Website / socials: https://www.alansuits.com
Alan Arthur Suits

Interview

How did you start making sitars?

I wasn’t so interested in music or instruments until I was maybe 9 years old. I encountered Western medieval and renaissance  music and was instantly attracted to that, and was also hearing the sort of ‘background noise’ of sitars in pop music.

There was a violin dealer in my neighborhood – I remember he had a 7 stringed student sitar in his window. I was desperately fascinated with it and begged him to take it out of the window so I could see it closer. He was pretty grumpy and never did let me see it up close. I got more into Indian things  and discovered Indian music in all its incredible diversity – so many different instruments, so many different styles and cultures all contained in one huge geography.

Through a series of events I still can’t explain I ended up staying with the great Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and studied with him-only for a month! – when he had his school in San Rafael, California many years  ago. It changed my life and some years later when I was 18 I lived in Madras and studied Carnatic music – the Saraswati Veena. I spent a lot of time with C.D.Sambandam in his tiny workshop and he patiently showed me a great deal about the construction and maintenance of the various South Indian stringed instruments.  

Over the years I owned many sitars and various Indian instruments came to me for repairs or strings and I learned a lot from seeing them in various states of playability or disaster damage. So long before the Internet it was exponentially more difficult to learn what I wanted to understand these instruments.

In 2007 I built my first sitar. I had owned dozens and seen many more and had specific ideas of what I wanted in terms of design, quality and sound. I had been daydreaming about commissioning one in India but the inevitable snags and problems with that convinced me to make my own. I already had a lot of experience with instrument making, mostly Renaissance instruments, so I plunged into it. 

What does your environment mean to your work?

I live in the foothills of the Sangre de Christos mountain here in Santa Fe at 2240 meters. It was a great blessing to end up in these mountains with clear fresh air and long legendary Western vistas. Having my own dedicated studio and workshop with all my tools and wood in one place is priceless. 

There isn’t much Indian music activity locally but the Net is essential to be in contact with the wider world of players, builders and enthusiasts. I find that the dry, moderate mountain climate is ideal for my lutherie. Being a luthier means a lot of your day is spent working with things not far from your face so it’s a great tonic to be able to take a breath and look out over the wild mountain scenery.

What, in your opinion, makes a good sitar?

Like any instrument a sitar has to be functional / playable first, meaning comfortable in the hands. To be a good instrument it has to be made with quality material, including glue, metal parts, wood, and bone and antler. And without doubt it should be a beautiful thing to see.

A sitar has to be constructed to sound good – which is a very complex formula including thickness of the woods used, shape of the soundboard, string gauges, and all the minute details of design and layout necessary for any good stringed instrument. The overall attention to details, finish work and fit is fundamental. These details are sadly and frequently overlooked in a majority of the sitars from India. I have rarely encountered an Indian built sitar with decently fitted tuning pegs. 

Where does your creativity come from?

My ideas and concepts of instrument making are based on hands-on experience and investigation as well as the generous help and advice I’ve gotten from instrument makers in India, West Africa, and the Middle East as well as Occidental luthiers. There’s no substitute for actually handling an instrument. Even a few minutes of holding and looking at an instrument can speak volumes beyond any images or measurements and descriptions. After years of examining instruments, you can develop a lot of virtually instinctive feeling for this. 

How do you combine tradition and innovation?

I am fascinated by all ‘pre-modern’ instruments – in sitars, especially those that predate the 1940’s. There are some facets of earlier designs that I incorporate like flat fingerboards that work very well. I have built several sitars with much flatter frets, similar to the surbahar, that I prefer to modern highly arched frets. The Rudra Veena and Saraswati Veena both use flat frets and long sliding meend notes are no problem.

I like to try to utilize designs that are mostly Indian in inspiration but are still my own work. I have used soundholes in my sitars which yield a much better projecting sound. Soundholes in sitars are not so common for the simple banal reason that India’s climate encourages all kinds of insects, rodents and reptiles that are happy to inhabit sitars, but some Indian makers do use soundholes.

What materials do you prefer to use and why?

I use nothing but natural materials. I distrust plastics and celluloid. Many older sitars used celluloid for ornaments and it will sometimes actually disintegrate. I use camel or buffalo bone for many parts and brass for chikari posts. Bone is pungent to work with but will last for centuries. Stainless steel makes the best frets.

How do you collaborate with musicians?

I’ve mostly built instruments to fulfill my love for building them. I don’t let anything leave my workshop unless it meets my standards of what I’d want to play myself. It’s possible with luck and some care an instrument can be around for generations and the integrity and work of the luthier will be there also. I’ve only done a bit of work on commission and I’ve been fortunate that there’s been good interest in what I have ready now.

I’ve done a lot of repair and restoration, which can be very satisfying. Bringing something back to life, or just small tweaks that make an instrument better, is a big part of lutherie. It can also be challenging if not scarey not knowing what might be inside a sitar that’s been badly built or repaired previously.

An instrument is a tool that connects mind, soul and hands of both the player and the maker. It’s always fascinated me to hear different players on the same instrument – it might as well be different instruments. Instruments change and develop from a lot of playing. I’m always hoping  that my instruments out in the world somewhere are making beautiful music, and making their players happy.

What project are you most proud of?

I built my most elaborate sitar with extensive ornamental inlay work and carving – it is basically a “Ravi Shankar” style sitar but with inlays rather than leaf carving on the soundboard. I spent over 400 hours on it and probably will not do this again. It was very satisfying to make this instrument – it does everything I wanted in terms of tone, playability and aesthetics.

What was your biggest challenge?

I built a Rudra Veena – it has  a mahogany dandi with integral fret ledges. I was able to obtain some extra large gourds from a grower in Arizona. The Veena is a truly fascinating instrument with some of the most profound esoteric music, all of it mystical and associated with tantric sorcery and Mughal courtly sophistication – a uniquely Indian masala.

What are your dreams for the future?

I have enough gourds and material for several more sitars, but at this point I am concentrating on Renaissance lutes and vihuelas. I’ll always love sitars and do occasional tweaks and repairs for people that find their way to my workshop.

I realized at a tender age I did not want to pursue being a musician but I loved musical instruments, so being a luthier was either my destiny or just how things happened. My parents were incredibly gifted artists and my mother was a concert pianist at 9 years old. My father was a true Renaissance man and did silversmithing, sculpture, ceramics… working with my hands and making things has always been first nature to me.

Quote From The Bench

Even a few minutes of holding and looking at an instrument can speak volumes beyond any images or measurements and descriptions.

My Reflection

What strikes me most when reading the work of Alan Arthur Suits is the balance between technical precision and genuine curiosity. Rather than presenting fixed rules, he often encourages careful observation and critical thinking. This resonates strongly with my own experience as an instrument maker. Every sitar, surbahar, or tanpura presents its own challenges, and no amount of theory can replace the lessons learned through direct contact with the instrument.

I am also impressed by the humility that can be sensed between the lines of his work. Despite his extensive knowledge, there is always an openness to learning and reconsidering established assumptions. In a field where tradition and innovation constantly interact, this attitude remains important today.

For me, Alan Arthur Suits serves as a reminder that craftsmanship is not simply the execution of techniques. It is an ongoing dialogue between maker, material, and sound. His legacy encourages us to keep asking questions, to observe carefully, and above all, to remain students of the instruments we build and restore.

Discover More

Want to know more about the work of Alan Arthur Suits:

And would you like to learn more about sitars and maintenance yourself? Feel free to take a look at SiTAR FAcToRY.

Next Episode

Coming soon in Meet the Maker: Chris Doddridge, UK