Cigar box sitar

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.

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March 10th, 2009 4

My friend Justin Sabe made this nifty cigar box sitar and did an Instructable and a short YouTube vid for it.

I decided yesterday to stop thinking about how to do it and finally make a cigar box sitar. The main difference is the buzzing bridge. In many ways, it’s easier to make than a cigar box guitar/ukulele because it’s fretless and doesn’t have any critical measurements to make it in tune. It took me as long to construct as my girlfriend to take a medium-length bath and about three times longer than that to fine tune it for a good rich buzzing sound. As you can see, my cat likes it just fine.

Cigar box sitar (tamboura)

4 thoughts on “Cigar box sitar”

MAcsSNAcs says:

March 11th, 2009 at 6:46 am

The sound that was being made was more like that of a Tampura (or Tambura), as in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8ymNSQzc

This is a sitar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLZ-zW9Ti4

Just wanted to clarify :)
Justin says:

March 11th, 2009 at 9:04 pm

MAcsSNAcs, true. I went with the misnomer that people would recognize and the alliteration in the title. I’m thinking of the final version having both the drone strings and the big frets. And an arduino to count out different tala.