tumba | Sitar Factory

Tumba Horror

Posted on Saturday, 19 November 2022 by AnandaSaturday, 19 November 2022

A while ago, I received this mail:

Hallo,

I got the chance to buy an old Rikhi Ram GP Sitar for 40€ only (the 60yo sellers dad died and she kept it since~30yrs ago so I would guess 1970s or 80s).

The sitar looks very good and has the white/gold Rikhi Ram label, but the gourd is broken on two positions or more. Some parts of the gourd they kept, some parts are missing. Someone unfortunately already tried to repair it without any success, the repaired pieces look extremely shitty glued 😀
I would like to get the sitar repaired, but I wouldn’t trust me to do it so I thought Ill contact you as I follow your blog enthusiastically for some time now.

Can I maybe send you some pictures to get you an impression of the damage? Since the sitar just stood around for 30ish years, I would like to get a full facelift done of everything plus jawari of course.

Sören, from Germany

A while later, the sitar has arrived…
Terrible what happened to this sitar:

It is difficult to find out what product was used. I think it must have been a hard synthetic glue on the inside, and then overlaid by a hard hot glue on the outside.

The good news is that the construction on the inside is well done firmly, so that is a good point. I can remove the hard glue on the outside with a chisel and make it smooth again. The tumba is definitely repairable. It does have a few pieces missing, but I can repair them with pieces from another broken tumba I have lying around here.

Once the tumba is ready, I can remove the remnants of that shitty glue on the outside with sandpaper and smooth the surface. A new black wax bond is also applied.

Followed by a finish with new colour & shellac lacquer layers.

The rest of the sitar looks fine. All the pegs are ok but turn very stiffly, the frets are oxidised but of fine quality, a good bridge in horn is present and intact and the joint is tight.

Finally frets repolishing and binding, new strings, doing jawari and tuning etc…

I think this sitar is definitely worth all the work. It is a common good quality Rikhi Ram Gandhar Pancham 70-80’s model that has potential to be a good sounding & reliable sitar. So be it! 🙂

Rudra Veena repair

Posted on Wednesday, 13 July 2022 by AnandaSunday, 16 October 2022

This anonymous rudra veena was found by my friend Guillaume CZLT in Bombay Pekin Bruxelles, a shop for second-hand furniture in Brussels. It was quite badly damaged. One of the tumbas was badly broken, the main bridge had been torn off and lost, and all the frets had been worn away. The fretboard looked more like a pattata field. All the frets were loose and crooked on the neck. A cikari pin was broken… and one day there must have been strings on the instrument…?The work started with repairing the broken tumba. I counted 27 pieces (or small pieces) and 3 appeared to be missing. The puzzle was put back together in 5 stages. Fortunately, everything still fitted well and the transitions are usually smooth. A few coats of varnish over the whole finished this part. Colour matching was not done at this stage.After that, the frets were taken in hand. The old aluminium strips were easily lifted out of the holder. I ordered a set of 24 new pre-cut pieces of fret wire Wagner 9671 Nickel Silver Frets, Large/Jumbo, with dimensions (W x L x H): 70 x 2,75 x 3,2 mm. But first the fret holders all had to be made equal and properly attached to the central guiding shaft. And this one was crooked and irregular too. With a little trick I could get all the frets nicely in one row and fix them firmly in place. After that, I made the top even and flat and finally installed the new frets. That looks good!The last part is the new ghodi. A round base that is glued to the neck gets a nice straight surface. On top of that comes a removable ghodi that is firmly held in place by two metal pins. Quite a construction, but in the end it fits nicely on the whole. Because the upper part is removable, you can easily do jawari at any time. Now all that’s left is to put new strings on it…I think Guillaume will be pleased… 😉

Technical info on strings & tuning according to Asad Ali Khan style:

The scale measures 945cm & the instrument is tuned to G#
Cikari’s: steel 0,30mm (N°3) tuned to G#3 (SA) & G#4 (SA)
Baj tar: steel 0,40mm (N°6) tuned to C#2 (MA)
SA tar: bronze 0,56mm (N°24) tuned to G#2 (SA)
PA tar: bronze 0,72mm (N°22) tuned to D#2 (PA)
Kharaj: flatwound bronze 0,92mm (N°20) tuned to G#1 (SA)
Laraj: bronze 0,56mm (N°24) tuned to G#2 (SA)

For more info about rudra veena you can visit www.rudravina.com and www.rudraveena.org

Hiren Roy 70’s refurbish

Posted on Wednesday, 21 July 2021 by AnandaWednesday, 21 July 2021

Hiren Roy 70’s refurbished…

Peeling tumba & crack repair with color change…

before

after

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.

front
front tabli
tumba
front head
second tumba
front deco
tabli
ghoraj

Drowned Sitar

Posted on Friday, 13 December 2019 by AnandaThursday, 12 December 2019

More than one year ago, an awfull sitar was brought to me. At first sight it looked like it was burnt, but actually it was only drowned for some time. This sitar was stored in a basement which has been filled with water due to an inundation. Only after some time it has been rescued and luckily it was protected by a good fiber case. All the strings and hardware got ruined. The damage to the tumba was horrible but the neck seemed to have endured the misadventure well.

I removed all the hardware and pegs and started to let the sitar rest and dry up completely for almost one year. Then, after some time, the tumba’s lacquer finish started to peel off. So, I removed everything which was hanging some loose and made a new build-up. Fortunately it was a decent tumba, sturdy and round. Then colouring and a fresh full-scale shellac finish finally made it look like a new… real good Srishti Musical sitar.

Tumba cosmetics repair

Posted on Wednesday, 8 June 2016 by AnandaWednesday, 8 June 2016

It began with an ordinary crack. Yet another case of overzealous luggage handling at airports. Very regrettable, but in this case it revealed an underlying and overwhelming problem.

A tumba is made out of a gourd, which is a natural product. As it grows on the field, the shape becomes more or less irregular, as squiggly as nature can be. But in a musical instruments setting this isn’t always very usable or good-looking…

Thus here and there some cosmetics are necessary to give it a more practical, handsome round shape. To obtain this, in general, plaster is applied. But sometimes regular plastering isn’t adequate. When more than a couple of millimeters difference in levelling needs to be adjusted a heavier and stronger filler is needed. Then sawdust, wooden dust, water and woodglue are well mixed and applied prior to the plaster mixture.

On this sitar it seems that the mixture has been made with a persistent shortage of glue. And, secondly, really a massive amount of this poorly mixed material has been used. The obvious reason for this is that the original tumba was of a critical quality. Now it is clear that it is just too thin and weak. At several places the tumba is hardly 2mm thick.

Thus, when repairing the crack, more and more chunks of almost already pulverised wooden dust filler simply fell off from the tumba. Finally, almost the complete surface seems to be covered and more than 50% became loose.

In order to obtain a better bonding the plaster is mixed with woodglue as well. A lot of work…, a lot of drying time needed…, sanding, filling, drying, sanding, filling, drying, sanding…, fine sanding, sealing, colouring and finally the finishing touch with shellac.

Read more about tumba repair : click here

Cavitied G.Rosul gourd

Posted on Wednesday, 21 October 2015 by AnandaTuesday, 5 January 2016

The second tumba of this brandnew beginners G.Rosul sitar has been affected by worms. When the instrument fell down to the ground one day, the gourd got severely broken. Close examination revealed that a big worm has been digging a lot of tunnels through the gourds soft & dry flesh. At some points only the very thin outer peel (hard crust) has been left making this tumba extremely fragile. Where and when this worm got in and out the gourd is hard to find out. But certainly we don’t want this kind of destructive parasites inside our beloved instruments, nor in our house…

The repair of it started with filling up most of the tunnels with a mixture of fine wooden sawdust, water & woodglue. After that the outer shape could be restored using a mixture of wooden sanddust, plaster, woodglue & colourpigment. Finally came the sanding, colouring & the finishing with lacquer.

At this point I would like to notice that nowadays on more and more (cheap) sitars a synthetic sprayed lacquer finish is applied. The problem is that these synthetic solvents react very different with colourpigments that are used in the traditional shellac finish procedure (french polishing). Even worse, shellac doesn’t attach well to these chemicals. One is obliged to start determinating the kind of chemicals used in this spray, and look for eventual available alternatives which can be applied succesful to it. And I didn’t even mention the bad health aspects which might come along when working with these cheap synthetic mixtures…
But, what to do ? Just don’t buy it ?!! At least ask for traditional finish !!

Kartar Chand sitar restoration

Posted on Wednesday, 5 January 2011 by AnandaThursday, 21 March 2013

This early 70’s original Kartar Chand sitar just left the restoration booth. Complete body check-up and new polish has been done by late Kartar’s brother Hari Chand in New Delhi in march 2009 while I was there on a visit. The celluloid mother of pearl imitation parda lanes have been renewed. My part of the job was to refurbish the original pardas and fit them again on the new lanes. I also made and fit new stagghorn jiwaris for main strings and taravs. The original tuning pegs were used again but some taravkuti-holes needed a new bushing.

Note the very fine finger grips on these taravkutis and also the remarkable cherry-round tumba-shape which is very typical on all Kartar Chand’s sitars.