The most notable results are 7 sitars and 1 surbahar where he replaced the traditional gourd and tabli with a lute-style resonator and soundboard. He also explored other materials and used Elforyn, ebony, spruce and maple, among others. He experimented with leftovers of exotic hardwoods to make new bridges.

But his soul and work now lives on among us thanks to the magnificent work of Matyas Wolter. He has created a wonderful website on the work of our dear Dieter Zarnitz. It has become a beautiful tribute to his work, excellently documented and solidly provided with masterful sound clips and photos. A must see !!!

Visit the website here: https://matyasitar.de/dieter-zarnitz-instruments/

They are made out of golden dragon snake Juma® blocs. Juma® – the name stands for independently developed and very modern processing material made from a mixture of various mineral base materials, bound in a resin component. Just like Elforyn® is Juma® excellently suited for the production of components and artistic objects such as knife handles, jewelry, eyeglass frames, or music instrument parts. “Produce your own custom items and delight in genuine one-of-a-kind pieces that no one else will be able to imitate.” the website says.

The material is indeed easy to work with and the result feels very natural and pleasant. The optical effect is stunning and has a nice impression of depth. It is definitely very suitable for decorations, mankas and possibly a tarav ghoraj. But I think it has too little resistance to wear to be suitable for a main ghoraj. Elforyn®, on the other hand, does well. Follow this link for Elforyn® examples.

In any case, it looks impressive on Zach’s beautiful sitar. The manka of the main string is made a little bigger than that of the other strings.

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! 🙂

David started building it in october 2017 @ CMB (Centre for Musical Instrument Building – Puurs, Belgium), starting with the mould which he made together with the mould for his lute project. He then continued working on it at home in the basement until his departure to the Vercors, France, in July 2018. From August that year, he continued to work on it passionately there and by September that year the shell was finished.

The neck had been hollowed out and attached to the shell by November. That hollowing out gave him a good tendinitis, he was unable to play guitar for six months…. and by December the fingerboard was on. He deliberately kept that one completely flat.

In February 2019, he started working on the tabli, which finally got ready in April (finished with the fish holes instead of F-holes, it’s based on Art-Nouveau carp designs, but people sometimes see sharks or whales in there 🙂 )

By September he finished the parda rails, he put in the tuning pegs in January 2020 with the help of a friendly violin maker who borrowed his reamers. By March 2020 the sitar was completed with the pardas on, but no taravs yet. In June, the tarav rail was added, deliberately opting for a system with cithar tuning pins: The neck is from Limba, a type of wood that is quite stringy, and it seemed dangerous to drill about fifteen holes in a single line along the entire length there and then to start pushing tuning pins into it…?

David based this instrument on the Dieter Zarnitz designs during a visit there but he modified Dieter’s plan a little. Dieter Zarnitz’s sitars are symmetrical, while David has given the neck on a slight angle upwards and also a slight twist opposite the tabli.

The tabli is 400mm wide. The neck is 94mm wide. The scale is 920mm (3cm longer than a standard sitar).
This baritone sitar is tuned lower then a regular sitar. It is tuned in B#, which turns out to be the Helmholz frequency of the shell. The extra bass string sounds very good.

Info about the wood of this instrument:
Merisier (from Vosges) is used for the shell, given to him by his father.

The reels are made out of Linde.
The neck and fingerboard are made from Limba.
The tarav rails are made out of Indian Rosewood.
The tabli is Epicea from near Grenoble, given to him by a violin maker (it was a piece meant to make a cello).
The langoot is made from moose antlers reinforced with steel nails

The ghodi is made out of Rosewood
A surbahar string set is mounted.

Have a look

It’s a beauty !!!

Wax is used as a filler. Prepare it by melting it slowly. Be careful not to overheat. Also, …damps can be dangerous! Add some nice colour pigments to the melted wax and stir. Use a scraper to apply the wax on the engravings. Let it cool down and scrape the excess off.

A scraper can be made out of an old and worn blade of a hacksaw. Make the edges surface nicely straight and perfectly even. Don’t be afraid to polish it up. Then learn to scrape by holding it almost perpendicular to the surface.

More info on Elforyn™ here: www.elforyn.info

Basically the instrument consists of a bass guitar-neck fitted on an acoustic guitar body. It has 7 main strings, 12 taravs & 23 specially shaped pardas. The 5 highest notes, located on the soundboard, are fixed while the remaining 18 are moveable. The instrument’s impressive head accommodates 17 tuning keys. Amongst them are 4 banjo-type tuners pointing to the backside and 2 extra machine heads are mounted on the neck for tuning the cikari strings.

On Shintai’s request I’ve added a regular sitar jawari (Elforyn™) and an extra wide tarav jawari (bone) and also 6 moveable tarav moghara (Elforyn™)

“Due to increased market demand, the quality level of Indian instruments currently being produced has suffered significantly. (I made a living for years repairing them in California). Recognising this fact, I moved to Pune, India with my wife and family in April, 2003 to re-establish the high quality standards for instrument production. My intention is to produce a line of Sitars and Tanpuras based on those of the mid-20th century.”

After this adventure, he resides in Charlotte, North Carolina and made his first own handmade sitar. It took about 18 months and 3 rewrites to produce the “Karasek Sound Domestic Custom Sitar Number 1”. Tony writes about it:

“The priority was first and foremost – sound with finest quality materials, components, joinery and consistant fit and feel. To that end, this sitar came into being. The body is made of mahogany with padouk wood trim. Indian rosewood pegs, Arizona grown gourds, delrin bridges and faux tortoise shell trim finish off the rest of the instrument. Internally, there have been many new innovations that have not only produced a far more solid instrument but greatly enhanced the tone and resonance.”

I would love to see  and feel this unique and most promising instrument in real and play it. Meanwhile for me there are only a couple of impressive pictures to see, and a youtube demo. All the above pictures are from Tony. You can find more of them and also a lot of very detailed and unveiling info at his website Karasek Sound here.

It’s a clever and easy idea… to provide your universal bench vice with a stable and ergonomic base. It makes this handy basic tool so much more versatile. It’s a very useful tool for lots of sitar (and other -) work. A no-miss for jiwari work (!!), parda making and mizrab making. Over-all convenient for general wood work – cutting / sawing / drilling / glue-clamp. Although in India hands as well as feet are trained to perform together in sitar making, this always available, never tired and always strong helping hand will become surely your daily friend.

This photo: Hari Chand on my workbench, Bierbeek 2000. Photo by Shivoham.

I’ve added a simple and illustrated “how to build” guideline to Maintenance / Tools – page. Or click here.

Alan writes on his website:

“The sitar was built to concert level quality, using the highest grade materials and craftsmanship. The body is a natural gourd as is the top tumba (gourd resonator). The main body is Spanish cedar (virtually identical to Himalayan cedar or Tun wood). All the ornaments are real ivory recycled from 70 year old piano keys. The bridges are African blackwood, a species of rosewood, one of the hardest known woods and considerably harder than ebony, with rosewood feet. The pegs are turned of Bolivian rosewood.”

“The sitar plays with excellent action and has a truly superb tone with great overtones, sympathetic response, and a Nikhil Banerjee style jawari. It will fit in standard fiberglass sitar cases.”

More info see Coyote’s Paw Gallery Ltd.