Kartar Chand sitar restoration

SiTAR FAcToRY Posted on by

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.

This sitar sounds amazingly bright and has a vivid tarav response. The meends play very easy and the instrument is very light-weighted.

Red Sitar made by Hari Chand

SiTAR FAcToRY Posted on by

This ravishing red sitar was made by dearest friend Hari Chand for my lovely wife Tine in 1995. The pictures were recently made by Luc De Gezelle.

The sitar is fully decorated with a discreet hidden om sign in the upper celluloid plate design. There are 12 taravs and 21 vanadium chrome plated pardas. All 3 jiwaris are made out of stagg horn and there is one extra cikari installed. Hari Chand has been working almost one month to complete this unique and beautiful sitar. It is one of the last sitars of this kind, 100% handmade by the master himself.

Visit Hari Chand’s  shop here.

Sitar factory near Kolkata

SiTAR FAcToRY Posted on by

Watch this video from Mr Simonggill about present-day sitar making in Calcutta. Here the real work is done…!! These small factories almost cover the worldwide production of sitars. They produce prefab sitarbodies for all well-known sitar makers such as both Rikhi Ram’s, Hiren Roy, Srishty Musical, RA Sitarmaker, Hari Chand, Raj Musicals, Kartar Chand Dhiman, etc… Far gone are the old times…!!!


The music is from Ustad Vilayat Khan: Raag Hameer.

Sitar Shopping

SiTAR FAcToRY Posted on by

Do you want to buy a (new) sitar ?

For sure when it is your first sitar then you might feel somewhat uncertain…??
Because very frequently this question has been put to me, I’ve decided to make a “check list” with 10 tips to help you to decide if the sitar which is laying in front of you is ok to buy or not.

If you really want to minimize the risk, then always go to a shop yourself and check the instrument thoroughly before you buy it. And, take your time for this. Buying a sitar online, with only a good looking picture and dito description on a fancy internet shop is looking for trouble. Sitars are always handmade and the overall quality varies very much. They are also very fragile. Unless you invest in a good fiber case, shipping a sitar by air or sea will almost always end up on arrival with a broken tumba (pumpkin) and / or broken kutis (tuning pegs), or even worse…

You can find the Sitar Buying Tips here. It is also linked under Resources.

Another interesting article about this on the web can be found here.

Good luck.

Travel Sitar Mods (3A)

SiTAR FAcToRY Posted on by

Both Rikhi Ram brothers Ajay & Sanjay, and after them many others, make and sell this handy and compact sitar. Some call it “Ovation” sitar, some call it “Studio” sitar and also “Travel” sitar is commonly used for this successful innovative musical instrument. Commercially it is a succes. No doubt about that.

But here is a list of remarks and complaints with which players came to me after they have been buying a new travel sitar in New Delhi.   In my opinion there are a number of improvements that could be achieved rather easily:

The pickup doesn’t sound good, and comes loose in no time. So you can install a better one. (see Travel Sitar Mods (1) )

The tuning machines are cheap and crappy, and can get stuck after a few string changes. Also here it’s a good investment to install better ones. (see Travel Sitar Mods (1) )

Not much care has been taken to fit the jora tar properly.  Only one travel sitar from Sanjay’s Rikhi Ram was ok. Too often there is need for intonation adjustment. (see Travel Sitar Mods (2) )

There are also some complaints about the finishing touch:

Parda’s which were made too short are installed anyways. A friend of mine has lost a parda while performing on stage with his “brand new” instrument. Floops, suddenly there it goes…

The new style decoration strips look like a cheap copy of simple western repetitive patterns. And when they are fit on the body they are not always correctly matching.

And finally there is my personal opinion concerning the “amputated” head. Of course this square leftover stump is one of the main basic improvements made to recent sitar making and playing in general since many years. But to me, it doesn’t look beautiful. I regret the  lack of creativity. Isn’t it a missed chance to make this sitar look nicer on stage?

So, inspired by my own developed series of new style sitars I want to introduce my ultimate travel sitar modification. For this experiment I use a travel sitar body which I’ve been buying from Raj Musicals in New Delhi.

I started with opening the sitar neck and removing the square stump piece. Then  I created a new head piece derived from the SAS and SBS sitar heads draft. In order to maintain strenght in the new construction the original neck’s top plate also had to be renewed. The celluloid decoration will be re-used on top of the new plate.

To be continued…

Gibson EB-3L

SiTAR FAcToRY Posted on by

During my learning school at Centrum voor MuziekinstrumentenBouw, CMB, at Puurs, Belgium, in 2000 I made a Gibson EB-3L replica. I’ve choosen this electric bass because of the unique and original “slotted head” construction which I applied later to my new style sitars SAS-01 etc…

This guitar has a Honduras mahogany body and neck with Indian rosewood fretboard and head top plate.
Because the original instruments sound wasn’t very inspiring I decided to replace the pickups with some modern and better performing types made by Di Marzio. Their DP145 Will Power™ neck model is very deep-sounding with great low-end definition. Its dimensions are the same as the original replacement Model One™, but it’s a little louder and fatter-sounding, and pole piece spacing is slightly wider for better string alignment with long-scale basses.

  • neck

pictures made by Luc De Gezelle 2009

Shipment finally arrived…

SiTAR FAcToRY Posted on by

During my last trip to India in march 2009, I collected some sitar bodies and other instruments.
Now they finally arrived, after more then 7 months…

unloaded picture, try CTRL + F5

Next to a variety of techno-organisatory problems which caused the delay, the packing service got worse as well.

unloaded picture, try CTRL + F5

This is the result: severely broken tumba on brand new gents vocal tanpura.

unloaded picture, try CTRL + F5