Tag Archives: varisitari

The electric sitar, by Coral

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If you google “electric sitar” then you ‘ll find over 200.000 hits referring to the Coral “electric sitar” which actually is an early solid body guitar that sounds like a sitar. Vincent Bell invented a number of electric guitar models for Danelectro and Coral. He designed perhaps the first electric 12-string guitar, and invented the electric sitar in 1967, using it on such hits as “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers, “Band of Gold” by Freda Payne, and “Heartbreaker” by Gene Pitney. See this funny early ad:

Also wikipedia writes this, but it is and remains a guitar, made for guitarists. It is not a sitar, isn’t it…?

Read also an interesting article “West meets East” by Frederick W. Harrison about how the sitar came to be heard in the western pop music.

Dieter Zarnitz

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A very special and most beautiful series of sitars and surbahars made by Dieter Zarnitz.

The tumba is replaced by a wooden construction as used in traditional western lute making. Neck and body are made from flamed maple, with old air-dried pine soundboard.  The head and curl are made of rosewood, the tuning pegs are made from ebony.

Dieter Zarnitz Collection

Electric Zeetar

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Anyone ever seen this one in real ?

Electric Zeetar

The Rajah Zeetar is an instrument made in the 1960’s in the likeness of a sitar. Supplied with an electronic amplifier. Made in Japan. It comes with 2 eye-catching big magnetic pickups and the body is made of papier-mache with a wooden soundboard, lenght is 112 cm.

Hiren Roy Compact Sitar

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Towards the end of last year Hiren Roy company came with their version of the “compact sitar”.

Hiren Roy Compact=

At first sight a regular sitar with an original slotted head, but …

compact tumba

…they simply cut the tumba by half.

It looks very similar to Sanjay’s “studio travel model“, which has a full wooden body. This very successful concept has been copied and sold by many other sitar makers.

Further pics and details of the Hiren Roy Compact sitar are available at http://www.india-instruments.de/pag/stringinst/sitar/hr_full_com_e.html. Pictures courtesy of www.india-instruments.de.

Jay Scott Hackleman

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Jay Scott Hackleman and late Kartar Chand Sharma

21 years ago Jay Scott Hackleman was so very lucky to be able to spend a whole year in the very special company of some of the world’s finest traditional sitarmakers, Kartar Chand & Hari Chand Sharma.

He wrote a profound article about his apprenticeship in the shop of Late Kartar Chand which has originally been published in The Journal of The Guilds of American Luthiers N°67 in 2002.

 

Hari Chand often talked to me about this “very fine young American person”. He showed me many pictures in his much used and thumb marked album. And during one of my last visits Hariji proudly presented me a beautiful copy from this unique article written by Jay. It’s a real extensive documentary (4,13Mb pdf), made with sincere care and love. Thank You So Much, Jay.

Today Tineke found a website about his present-day work.

Read the full Kartar Chand Hari Chand history here.