KarmaShaman

There's some nice character to that wood, and it's great to follow your thread, and how you're dealing with some of the unexpected pitfalls. This axe is going to look nice. When you glued your neck woods, why do you think there was a gap? Maybe some of the experienced members can also comment. Is it that the wood straight from the lunberyard can't be trusted to be truly flat, and needs to be run through a thicknesser for a couple of passes?

Curtis, I just noticed that you're in Oz. I'm also in Australia. Are there many others on this forum that you know of? The headstock may be an appropriate place - after all, there are clip on guitar tuners intended to pickup on the vibrations at that part of the body. Although I would probably need a flush speaker cone, and may not be able to scavange one that size (although I have some old bookshelf speakers that may have a good sized mid in the sealed box). I would think that the sitar strings have a lot of tension, at least on the internal strings, to get that much droning going on. The necks are gigantic though, so that probably compensates for any twisting danger. If you look at the image below of the Great Mr. Ravi Shankar (seen here with some guy from a little-known English band in the '60's), a good majority of Shankar's palm is scross the neck face, and still doesn't reach the top. One thing that comes to mind as I write, is that there are also many, many stories of broken sitars - it seems more westerners who own them have a broken one, usually the gourd cracking - so perhaps that tension without truss support isn't working out so well after all.

Having discovered Carlson's 'Taproot' video about two weeks ago, I have lost count of the times I have watched it. That guy is such an innovator, and it's inspirational, even though my own instrument will be rather crude in comparision. Back on the testing topic, and something I brought up in the opening post. Would a speaker cone bolted to the body of my guitar provide a good amount of energy to stimulate strings, if I were to feed a constant audio signal or sine wave tuned to the precise frequency I'm testing for? If that works, I could jack in and actually measure the output of isolated strings that resonate, and find the absolute best combination. I had thought that simply sitting the guitar on a speaker box would do, but I didn't get much stimulationm from either an electric or acoustic (likely a poor physical connectivity point) And on the subject of truss rods, there are instances of builds that defy what I believe to be it's purpose. I asked an innovative CBG maker if his neck has twisted or buckled in the three years since his build, and he claims it hasn't. Same too with a woman who built a CBG bass. And of course the sitar has no truss rod, and is under the strain of up to 20 strings. While it's probably not as critical if there were any twisting (the frets are adjustable) I would still think that if there were any neck twists that the some of strings wouldn't evenly terminate at the bridge and nut.

Thanks for the response. I just picked up a solid-body electric (an ESP roughly in the LP style & weight), unplugged - and found that the low E barely registers on the high E, but the high E most certainly excites the former. I'm working on touch observation only, and feeling the vibration/drone. That may be an important key to my design. Ideally, I would like an instrument, as a tester, to see if the high E excites another high E....... and even how this impacts on the middle range E (of which I would need an open, unfretted sample). I belive that the sitar is a steel-strung instrument, both plucked and sympathetic. And... no truss rod as far as I know. From what other 'heresay' I have picked up over the years, the sitar isn't exactly a stabilly tuned nor an easily tuned instrument. Thoughout the many tension changes over the neck, it's said to be very hard to 'dial in'. You mention a 'sympitar'. There's a guy called Fred Carlson who made an instrument much like you described. Sympathetic strings though the guts of the neck, and (very cleverly) tuned on pegs that reside on the headstock... actually Fred's version even has a truss rod. I'm not going to attempt this sort of design, because it's going to be too complicated as a first effort at making an instrument. I'm looking more towards buinding an entire instrument, say 1/2 scale, and installing it into another instrument, that I'll build around it. It'll be a box shape, without a doubt.

Hello all, I would like to have a conversation about sympathetic strings, and get some opinions from thos emore learned than myself. As a quick bit of background, I want to build a stringed instrument with non-plucked strings that with resonate when the plucked strings are played. Similar concept to the Sitar, or for those to 70's world/jazz fusion, the 'Shakti Guitar' played by John McLaughlin around that time. As I'm no luthier, nor built an instrument before, the build principles will probably be more in line with a pimped-out cigarbox style, rather than a pro-built instrument. I mention this, because there most definately not be a truss rod through the neck, although it will be well fortifed, perhaps as a multi-piece 'thru-neck' which will work around a steel resonator bowl in the instrument's body. So I'm hoping for some opinions, or even better, some cold hard mathematical facts, on the best string configurations for both the plucked strings and 'triggering' the non-plucked sympatheic strings. Consideration 1 - String gauge Am I correct in thinking that thinner strings hold more tension ? I'm wondering if heavier gauges will be a safer option, to avoid the instrument buckling over time. Consideration 2 - Configuration I hope we can examine the merits vs pitfalls of steel vs nylon strings. I would think that at least the sympathetic strings should be steel, to provide more 'twang' (although the outcome is really more of a drone, and the buzzing will be enhanced by a custom designed nut & bridge). Of the four configuration options, what may perform best: A. Steel Sympathetics & Steel Plucked B. Steel Sympathetics & Nylon Plucked C. Nylon Sympathetics & Steel Plucked D. Nylon Sympathetics & Nylon Plucked My heart is leading towards Steel + Steel for the best outcome as a droning device, but the concern is the lack of tension support over the length of the neck, so there will be many compromises. For the record, I'm tentativley planned on a low C, low F, high C, and two more high F's, with the same tuning on the sympathetic strings. I'll need to do some testing to see how strings respond to equal octaves, or whether a low octave will better trigger a higher octave drone. Any ideas on how I can test this ? I was thinking of bolting a speaker to an old Strat (Squire) and feeding a sine wave signal into the body, to see what the best string response is. An acoustic guitar would probably be better for this, being that the instrument build will be an acoustic, but I don't have one that I'm willing to destroy, wheres the strat is a junk guitar already.

Thanks for the replies. I have decided to go for conventional, geared pegs, and have just purchased a cheap set (this is for a prototype, so better quality gear will follow if and when the design is proven to work). Prostheta, you raise some other comments which I would like to expolore further. With regrads to the sympathetic strings being slightly out of tune, thus creating a dissonance, I would have thought that this is what I wanted to avoid at all costs. To my mind, the resonating strings would need to be as closely tuned to the played strings as possible, thus allowing for maximum vibration on the set that are clearly going to need a lot of stimulation without touch. Incidentally I will also be building a saddle that promotes buzzing, using the principles of a Jawari (a sloping shape rather than a sharp cutoff saddle that is common on guitars). In fact I'm thinking a hard steel tube around the overall size of a finger slide, sliced down the centre, would be perfect. You speak of woods under direct tension perhaps not holding up. Not sure what you mean here, are you talking about the absence of a truss rod? I'll need to do a bit of experimenting, but ideally I'm hoping that I can calculate a string length of around 1ft/30cm (very approximate figure here) to achieve the sympatic notes I require. So, half of a guitar's string length, will that result in half the tension, or twice the tension? I was thinking of using 3-layer plywood (that's likely to make many readers cringe!) for the first instrument. I'm quite flexible on the string types, and maybe I should consider nylon for the string material, as I probably won't be incorporating a truss rod into what will be my first 'luthier' type project ever. However i would hve thought that steel would 'sing' a lot better on the sympathetic part of the instrument.

Hello, first post here. I have joined because in 2014 I plan to build (or perhaps seriously mod) an instrument to loosely emulate the mechanics of a sitar, with a focus on the sympathetic strings being a primary feature. The design ideas are purely in my head at the moment, and there are several considerations. However one of the idea I have would be best suited in using 'straight throuh' tuning pegs, (ie; not the right angled, geared pegs found on guitars, bass etc) as you would find on a violin. As I'm probably leaning towards high-tension steel for the resonating strings, I'm hoping for some comments from others. Would this style of peg be inappropriate for steel strings? Bear in mind that they won;t see as much stress as regular setups, because the strings will never be 'plucked' other than when tuning them.