Buddha Systems in Hiren Roy
Engineer and passionate sitar player Ashok Nair has been making excellent pickup systems for sitar and other acoustic musical instruments for several years. They are sold under the name Buddha Systems and are now used by many well-known musicians worldwide. Matyas Wolter is one of them and has been…
Barun Roy broken joint
One day London based sitarist & composer Jonathan Mayer drove with his car straight from London to SiTAR FAcToRY in Belgium (+/- 8hrs drive). His favorite sitar, recently made by Barun Roy, has a severe joint problem. At first sight the joint has only loosened. A friend of him…
Tabli info
Dear friends, please hereby find some info about different styles of tabli. Clicking on the pictures will show up a drawing presenting the thickness (in mm) on different locations of the tabli and a zoom showing details of the surface finishing on the backside. Notice the increased thickness at…
Ustad Ilyas Khan’s HR sitar restoration – Pt2
Foto from left to right: Idris Khan – sitar, Ustad Ilyas Khan – sitar, Tadahiro Wakabayashi – tanpura. Foto © T. Wakabayashi This is the follow-up report to a project on the restoration of a special Hiren Roy sitar. Click here for the first part. Below is the second…
Ustad Ilyas Khan’s HR sitar restoration – Pt1
There is a very special sitar on my workbench. Special in many ways because it belonged to Ustad Ilyas Khan (1924-1989), a lesser known but highly skilled and deserving sitar player, born in Lucknow to a family of musicians. His father belonged to the Shahjahanpur gharana. This unique Hiren…
Hiren Roy 70’s refurbish
Hiren Roy 70’s refurbished… Peeling tumba & crack repair with color change… New jawari ghoraj mounted… Dieter Zarnitz jawari ghoraj with Cumaru top & Angelim Amargoso feet installed. Pardas added… Added RE komal & DHA komal, 23 pardas in total.
Tuning problem: Cracked wood
On a traditional sitar, tuning is established by pressing a wooden peg (kunti) into a hole. Unfortunately the wood on this Barun Ray sitar is cleaved. There is a long and deep split line between the baj and jora kunti. Both strings were not keeping tune anymore. The pegs…
Sitar Mod: adding 4th cikari, the alternative way…
Another young and dedicated Ashok Pathak sishya came to me with this old Hiren Roy sitar. The question came up again: Can you add an extra cikari string to this precious vintage sitar in order to meet the Balaram Pathak Garana style specifications?Since I am not so much in…
New pardas on Hiren Roy
This old Hiren Roy sitar, brought to me by Arnoud E. needs new pardas and some small repair work. Arnoud provided a full set of new pardas made by Hiren Roy Company, but some of them were made too short. Thus I decided to reuse a selection of the…
Tanpura damage
This small instrumental tanpura has been damaged during transport from Calcutta to Belgium. Frederic tS. has bought it new at Hiren Roy and shipped it by air with Jet Airways. The parcel arrived in Belgium with a slight crack in the fiber case and the instrument itself was pretty…
Hiren Roy Compact Sitar
Towards the end of last year Hiren Roy company came with their version of the “compact sitar”. At first sight a regular sitar with an original slotted head, but … …they simply cut the tumba by half. It looks very similar to Sanjay’s “studio travel model“, which has a…