saraswati guitar

There is a unique Hindustani instrument that has been made: a semi-hollow body electric 21-string guitar. Imagine a seven string jazz guitar with added chikari and twelve sympathetic strings. It is designed by Wes Lambe and was influenced by my ideas. It’s conception has been more than a year in the making. There is a long lineage of sympathetic string guitars and sitar-esque guitars. This will hopefully be something fantastic and unique to add to the family. It is also a fruition of my dream to create a guitar better suited to perform Hindustani classical and light music without being strictly a slide guitar and retaining much of the standard tuning. Main strings are e b g d a e a and chikari will typically be a and e or d (Sa, Pa and Ma). It is based on Wes Lambe's eight-string guitar designs and draws inspiration from Novax and Linda Manzer's work. To voice the instrument, we listened to a Saraswati Veena because it resembled an electric guitar tone naturally. So, I dubbed it the Saraswati Guitar. The semi-hollow body is all mahogany with ivoroid binding. The necks are maple with ebony fretboards, piezo and Kent Armstrong Filtertron style pickups (not shown in pic). The main neck has fanned frets and is designed to accommodate large bends (meend).