Sitar guitar

[Shadoweclipse13]

So cool, that double neck JM sitar. DYING to hear some sound clips. I really like that it's a thinline as well!!

I know the upper neck's fretboard is pretty high off the body, but hypothetically speaking, if the neck was closer to the body and the body wasn't thinline (i.e. hollow in some parts) would it be possible to have the pickups in their normal height and route a little place for the sitar bridge into the body (so everything is not so high) or would that not be possible? Your project is amazing as-is, but I only ask because I have a tiny little body I'm thinking about putting a sitar bridge onto and wondering if I could do that...

EDIT: This is the little body I'm planning to use for this (I'd use the bridge pickup hole for the sitar bridge and only have a pickup in the neck position). The bridge is a flat-mount 12-string bridge I got from Warmoth (6 strings anchor at the back of the guitar in ferrules, and the other 6 at the back of the bridge itself) which I think would sound awesome as a Sitar. I still want to figure out a way to make the Sitar bridge engage or disengage like a Jaguar mute though...

[Ro_S]

Sand off half the finish, that way you have The Best of Both Worlds.

actually, I'm thinking of half sanding off the finish. genuinely.

i'm gonna see what some emery pads or wire wool will do it before I get involved with sand paper. I don't mind the purple.

[Ro_S]

Here is my take on it. I used 2 sitar bridges, but had to make the one for the main strings adjustable to keep the 'buzz' when I moved the bridge about for intonation.It sounds very realistic, more so than the coral sitar. I made it double neck so it was more versatile, not that I have yet wrote a psych epic that needs sitar and guitar parts! The dual outputs are yet even more fun, having the guitar going to its own amp with lots of gain and delay but playing the sitar side, and letting the distorted guitar resonate and feedback...Sounds incredible, electric sitar with etheral synthy pad wash, cool cool. Tons more options, every time I pick it up I stay up well past my bed time and screw my life up! I have got into tuning the 12 resonating strings running through the body, to the key I am playing in at the time, a total pain but sounds more lively and authentic. Sorry for the excited breathless post,cool to see people on the same idea and wanted to share my baby. Kind of a prototype will build one with binding and a nicer design. WILL POST SOUND CLIPS SOON.

Hi -

thanks for posting about your project/guitar and showing pics. Do post links to recording of it.

I'm not going the whole hog of sympathetic strings or anything that fancy.

Did you ever compare the sitar bridges with the Gotoh buzz bridge ?

[Ro_S]

LATEST UPDATE

The stock pick-ups are ceramic bar magnet types. No surprise there.

I have a Danelectro style vintage spec lipstick pick-up I want to use. Initially I thought I'd swap it in for the stock Tele neck style pickup, but, instead, I think I'll actually add it in the middle and retain both of the stock pick-ups. Lowering the height of the existing pick-ups might be worth experimenting with.

I'll change the switching arrangement - I haven't decided how yet.

As intended at the neginning of the project, I'll also add some piezo discs. Whether they'll have their own dedicated output jack I haven't decided yet. It would give me the option of a stereo magnetic/acoustic outputs. I may, instead, make the piezos an option on a 5-way blade selector pick-up and leave the single existing output.

[Ro_S]

PROJECT UPDATE:

I've removed all the hardware, parts and circuitry from the Hannah Montana guitar, plus I took the neck off. It's stripped of everything.

I began removing the paintwork today. It's not thickly painted and it doesn't have any lacquer or whatever it is, so I'm sanding it off by hand (I don't have any fancy equipment or anything). It's coming off fine.

The sitar style bridge will either be fabricated from a blank of rosewood I bought, or I have a floating wooden bridge I could convert.

I'm now looking for advice, please, for how I can re-finish the guitar. I want to leave it 'natural', but I'd like to apply something to it to protect and seal it? What are my options for this? Don't laugh (or please do), but would ordinary furniture varnish be okay?
thanks

[Zork]

Thought I'd share: https://youtu.be/OaYxwu2bHKg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I'm the bassist but I built the sitar guitar in this video of my band.

[antisymmetric]

^Nicely done! I've checked out some of your other clips as well, I like your band very much. I think you'd go down very well in NZ.(unless you have already and I didn't get the memo, which would be embarrassing )
Any chance of some pics of the guitar?

[FunkyFlash5]

for a natural finish there are a lot of oil/varnish/wax options that people have had success with. part of it depends on weather you want it glossy and how much protection from dings and scratches you want. I know jmac is doing a build right now with tung oil, but i'm sure if you do a few searches for hand rubbed / natural/ oil finish you'll turn up many others who've tried the various options.

[Zork]

^Nicely done! I've checked out some of your other clips as well, I like your band very much. I think you'd go down very well in NZ.(unless you have already and I didn't get the memo, which would be embarrassing )
Any chance of some pics of the guitar?

Thank you, we haven't been to NZ but maybe one day. First we need to put together a setup we can take a plane with. As you can see we have a lot of stuff on stage. But it would be great for sure to make a NZ tour.
I'll take some pics of the guitar tomorrow.

[foot]

^Nicely done! I've checked out some of your other clips as well, I like your band very much. I think you'd go down very well in NZ.(unless you have already and I didn't get the memo, which would be embarrassing )
Any chance of some pics of the guitar?

Thank you, we haven't been to NZ but maybe one day. First we need to put together a setup we can take a plane with. As you can see we have a lot of stuff on stage. But it would be great for sure to make a NZ tour.
I'll take some pics of the guitar tomorrow.

I'm super curious to hear/see this also as I've had long standing plans to build something similar.

[Zork]

Okay, sorry for unintentionally hijacking the thread, this is going to be a longer post. So, here's the guitar:



It used to be an Egmond, like this one: http://www.egmond.se/egmond_se_Rambler2ES1.html
The original pickups are pretty badass, so I put one in my Tele in the neck position and one in my Harmony archtop and installed an old Klira pickup in the Egmond.

The guitar was quite a bitch to play, a neck like a baseball bat and very high action, a rattling bridge and some kind of a Jazzmaster tremolo that is making jokes about tuning stability all day long. As you can see, I'm deeply in love with this guitar and it went through various modifications.

The sitar mod was only meant as a prototype. It was more of a test, like "will it work?" and I originally had the intention to improve the principle on a better guitar if it works. But since the moment I put this prototype in the hands of my guitarplayer 3 years ago, she wouldn't let it go. I think these are still the original strings from back then.

The whole guitar is pretty filthy in the meantime, the action is ridicoulously high, the string spacing changes radically from bridge to nut, one tuner is missing and things like that. But my guitar player doesn't let me put a hand on it. She says it's perfect the way it is and she just loves it. Much to my surprise, this thing still works at every single gig…

Anyway, this is how the bridge looks like:





the fat neck sits really high above the relatively thin body, so this guitar was a good candidate for the also really high bridge of the sitar. I still had to file it down a bit, though:



Missing tuner:



...and the string spacing du to the groves at the bridge. Tuning is ebebe with light strings for less pressure at the bridge and more pronounced sitar snare, also for bendings with big intervals





So, yeah, that's about it. It's a filthy and mean machine and there's lots of stuff to improve, on the other hand it sounds really, really good. So what do you do?

[Ro_S]

PROJECT UPDATE (Dec 2015)

Reminder, the donor guitar is a Disney Hannah Montana 3/4-size electric.

Work undertaken so far:

- body and headstock now completely stripped of paint and sanded (ready for staining and varnishing).

- body cavity all routed and modified (including: expanded, 'swimming pool' pickup cavity; additional jack hole; holes and routing for several on/off rocker switches). plus, drilled holes for fitting screws.

- new scratchplate modified

- sitar bridge cut from rosewood blank.

I'll try to add a photo of the guitar body as it looks at present.

Current plan: