No sitar leaves a maker ready to play. It leaves ready to be finished. The workshops we buy from in Kolkata, Miraj and Delhi build superb instruments, but a sitar is a living structure of gourd, wood and thread under constant tension, and it keeps moving for months after it is strung. Everything we do on our bench in Mumbai exists to close that gap between a well-made instrument and an instrument that is genuinely ready for a player.
Why a new sitar needs setting up at all
Seven main strings and thirteen sympathetic strings brought up to pitch pull hard on a long, slender neck. A good maker allows for that pull when placing the frets and cutting the bridge, but nobody can predict exactly how much a particular neck will settle in its first year. A movement of less than a millimetre is enough to put every fret slightly out and to take the edge off a perfectly cut jawari. That is why an instrument that was excellent when it left the workshop can be disappointing when it reaches a player untouched.
What we do to every sitar before it is despatched
Complete restringing
We take the factory strings off and restring the instrument with wire we have chosen ourselves. String quality varies enormously and it is the cheapest possible upgrade to the sound of a sitar. Fresh wire also means the instrument arrives with strings that have already been stretched and settled on our bench rather than on your lap.
Jawari
Jawari means glimmering, and it is the shallow curve filed into the top of the main bridge. The string grazes along that curve rather than sitting on a point, and the result is the shimmering overtone cloud that makes a sitar sound like nothing else. The angle and length of the curve decide the whole character of the instrument, and filing it correctly takes years to learn. Every sitar we sell is checked and, where it needs it, recut before it goes out.
We set most instruments with a semi-open jawari. A very open jawari is thrilling on the first day and wears flat within months; semi-open sounds full, opens up further as you play it in, and lasts. If you want something different, say a more closed setting in the style of Nikhil Banerjee, tell us when you order and we will cut it that way at no extra cost.
Frets, pegs and action
We retie the frets with fresh thread, position each one against a tuner, check every peg for a true taper and chalk it, and set the action so the string clears the frets when you pull a note without making the instrument hard work. See our fret tying guide and our page on shaping a peg for how that work is done.
Playing it in
Then we play it. An instrument tells you things in ten minutes of playing that no amount of inspection will: a fret that buzzes only on one note, a sympathetic string that chokes, a peg that creeps. Nothing goes out of our showroom until somebody has sat with it.
What comes with the instrument
Every new sitar is supplied with a case, a spare set of strings and extra mizrabs, so you can start playing the day it arrives and are not stranded by the first broken string.
Buying from Mumbai, wherever you are
Being in India is the advantage here. We are a short journey from the workshops, we see far more instruments than any overseas dealer can, and we can hold a sitar back and work on it again if it is not right. We deliver across India in seven to ten days and ship worldwide from Mumbai, insured and properly braced for the journey. Before you commit to an instrument we are happy to record a video of it being played so you hear the actual sitar you are buying rather than a representative one.
Browse sitars in stock, read the guide to buying a sitar, or see who makes what in our guide to makers. Questions are welcome: write to us or send a WhatsApp message.