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Repair Services

Tantra Musicals offers repair and setup for sitar and surbahar. We offer the following repair services:

  1. Jawari (main bridge) , either repair existing ones or custom built from your choice of materials, e.g. bone, ebony, synthetic.
  2. Fix pegs and fit new pegs.
  3. Fix frets, retie and reshape frets
  4. Fix tarab eylets (holders for sympathetic strings)
  5. Replace nut, chicari posts etc

Jawari is the most commonly repaired piece. This is also the most important piece of the sitar and surbahar, as this is where the characteristic sound of the instrument is created. Natural materials like deer horn, bone and ebony sound great, but do wear out and require routine maintenance. In my experience, most sitars are sold with a roughly done jawari and, in time, will continue to break down. As this process continues the sound may become unpleasant, to say the least. At this point the jawari must be removed and filed to restore the right eliptical curve. This is a task not for the faint of heart! For DIYers out there, be careful, you can really ruin your bridge if you don'tknow what you are doing. I have ruined quite a few ;-)

Bone has been the standard material for jawari for ages. The thigh bone of a camel has been used after due processing in the past. Nowadays bones from other animals are also used. In working with jawaris made out of bone and ebony, I was surprised to find how much harder bone was than ebony. I made some jawaris out of both materials and try them for a differnt tone on my sitar.

These days, natural materials for jawari are becoming more difficult to find, illegal to export, or just undesirable. Fortunately, there are a number of synthetic materials that are excellent replacements. I was formerly a big fan of deer horn and ebony for jawari, but recently I have been impressed by delrin and a heavy duty fiberglass. I think there is very little sound difference and the huge advantage is durability. You may never wear down a synthetic jawari, of course it depends on how much you play.

So, long story short, we can also add a synthetic jawari on either your sitar, surbahar or taanpura.

Please contact us so that we can discuss your requirements.