Danelectro electric sitar?

[kellymaster]

danelctro electric sitar

This would be a interesting kit to play and this guitar is very rare and very expensive. so what do you think?

[Simon Barden]

It's all about the bridge. The only electric sitar bridge I can find is the GOTOH SB-5810-010, but that's £110 in the UK, currently AUD$220. I can't see any cheaper Asian versions around. Projected sales numbers would have to be pretty large to get a bridge tooled up and produced that can be sold at a cost low enough to supply with a low-price kit. And electric sitars are a fairly niche market.

You can still get a Danelectro mini sitar https://www.thomann.de/gb/danelectro...y_sitar_vs.htm and the full Danelectro sitar https://www.thomann.de/gb/danelectro_sitar_bundle.htm

As you say, they aren't cheap, but they aren't as expensive as the originals and some high-end copies that I've seen.

You may find this interesting. http://aaronlumguitar.blogspot.com/2...revisited.html

So you could try a DIY approach. You may even be able to make a buzzy bridge from a wrap-over style bridge with a file - and you can get cheap wrap-over bridges if you need to take a couple of goes at it. All you need to do is get a constant shallow angle on it.

[DarkMark]

Nice one Simon, and kellymaster. I feel like I don’t need much encouragement to go down this path.

[Simon Barden]

Nice one Simon, and kellymaster. I feel like I don’t need much encouragement to go down this path.

Go on, you know you want to do it...

[kuanjb]

That DIY bridge is pretty cool. I guess different material would sound different too.

Thinking it might be possible to make individual saddle pieces for a TOM style bridge too. Then you could still intonate each string and adjust the angle of the buzz slope for each string.

The sympathetic strings are also pretty interesting. I had no idea sitars had them. The springs in my Ibanez with a FR bridge buzz like anything. You could maybe put strings in the spring cavity of a Strat or similar. Though I'm not sure what notes you'd tune them to.

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[JimC]

The 12 tones for the sympathetic strings I should have thought, although I see the Thomann page recommends a Dsus4 chord.

From a commercial POV the trouble is there's so much hardware it would all get awfully expensive. Each sympathetic string needs a tuner of some sort, if only piano/dulcimer/harp style key ones, you need pickups, and in a solid body as the link mentions there is an issue with getting the sympathetic strings to move enough. Nothing impossible, but boy I bet it would all add up to a rather expensive kit.

[Simon Barden]

You might be able to employ a 3D printer to make a sitar bridge for a guitar if you used the right material. Nylon might do, as Gibson used nylon for T-O-M saddles for a while.

I wouldn't worry too much about having precise intonation on a sitar-style bridge as the string contact with the sloped part of the bridge is certainly going to confuse things with regards to the active string length. I'm guessing that you probably have to have the actual bridge part set back a bit further than normal to compensate for this.

[FrankenWashie]

Nice one Simon, and kellymaster. I feel like I don’t need much encouragement to go down this path.

I have been doodling design ideas on this very thing. The challenge is quite intriguing, though definitely a future Lab project.

[DarkMark]

I have been doodling design ideas on this very thing. The challenge is quite intriguing, though definitely a future Lab project.

I’ve got a couple of projects to work on first, and I know you have a couple of projects (and then some) as well. Once I’ve finished those...

[Fretworn]

I have, in the past, considered getting one the those Gotoh bridges for my Dano U2 reissue. But in the end realised the I have no use for an electric sitar....