Apr 07, 2007 Is anyone aware of a pedal or modeler that will make my Strat sound kind of like a sitar. Pedal to make an electric guitar sound like a sitar. A sitar patch. Mar 25, 2013 Buying a Sitar Discussion in '. Deep Soul Treasures Rar. So for now I'm settling for the sitar patch in my Roland guitar synth for the occasional times I.

Click to expand. Be sure to get a full size one from a reliable source / maker. I got a painful lesson from my recent trip to India after buying a 3/4 size sitar from a tourists' store. Thinking that a smaller sized one would make it easier to be transported back to my country, I decided to get a smaller body/ shorter scale sitar.

Harmony With Lego Bricks Download Google here. The sales guy even threw in a playing guide for free. However, after settling down back home, I tried to tune it but the quality of the tuning pegs was so bad it was impossible to achieve or even hold a proper tuning.

And mind you, there are about 18 strings!!! Now it sits in my living room as a decorative travel souvenir. Here is a picture of the sitar I bought at the store.

It's beautifully made though. Got A Rougue electric sitar a copy of a coral for 169.00 on MF clearence well worth it.PLays like a guitar and easy to get the hand of, open g tunning really brings out the best in it oddly.

I have had a real one I saw in a shop in 1988 on the way to pick up the guys for a Floyd show and bought it for 150.00 and every one freaked out. Finding a book or how to tune it in pre net days was a bitch as was mic'ing it at an acoustic gig. Has carved wood pegs, 18 of the makes getting it in tune an ordeal at best. Made froma dried gourd so fragile as all hell. Be careful with the picks( Mizrab) ordere some and they will feel to fit fine, then they cut of the blood flow and cause extreme pain if not shaped right.

Can't say is I am any good at it, IT TAKES FULL TIME DEVOTION FOCUS to learn how to play it right. I will play it every day for a couple of weeks then leave it sit and gather dust 6 months or more.

Now 25 years latter on sitar I am like your idiot cousin at a party who grabs a guitar and says I can play and only knows the intro to Bon jovi's dead or alive. Still I can get a groovey cosmic sound out it and since most folks don't know jack about music from that region know one knows suck. Glad I have it but would not drop big money on one. Not sure why people are talking about electric sitars.

Those are guitars. Anyway, even very good sitars are tough to tune. Pegs are often slipping, even on concert level instruments.

Get one from a good dealer. Preferably one who can do a set up for jawari, which isn't likely to be good out of the box.

You also need to think about the style of music you might end up learning. Slightly different sitars for different schools. Try to find a teacher and enlist his help in getting a proper instrument. I bought mine here about a year ago...

I would like to have picked one out personally, but I couldn't manage a trip to the Bay Area at the time. Fortunately, the salesman with whom I spoke asked a number of good questions, and I wound up with a wonderful sounding instrument. It was very well packed for shipping. Now that said, outside of playing one for a couple of days back in the early '70s, I was a noob, and it's been a bit of a challenge. As others have mentioned, the tuners can slip rather easily -- they are strictly friction tuners -- and keeping it in tune is something of a challenge, especially from one session to the next. Another challenge has been the long reach-around (watch it!) required.

I'm not as young and flexible as I used to be, so that has been an ongoing adjustment. But in the end, the sounds are well worth the effort. Good luck to you. I purchased this software to provide percussion and tanpura...

Very worthwhile practice tool. Do not buy a sitar from someone who does not stand by their products!

There are a lot of crappy tourist's sitars out there that are not playable. I bought my sitar from 'Sitars, etc', which is now Rain City Music. The owner is named Lars.

He is known as a reputable and knowledgeable dealer who goes to India to pick out sitars, and makes sure they are set up properly. He is fantastic to deal with, and is an Indian Classical Music enthusiast and sitarist. He produced an excellent series of sitar instruction DVD's as well. I highly recommend speaking to him. I had a sitar (real one, not electric) on extended loan from a friend back in the 80's. It was fun to experiment with but is a totally different beast than a guitar and getting used to the playing feel took quite a while - not that I ever mastered it. As mentioned, tuning it and keeping it in tune can be challenging.

I've always loved the sound of a sitar, but am realistic about my abilities and the learning curve involved, so for now I'm settling for the sitar patch in my Roland guitar synth for the occasional times I want that sound in my music, although its obviously not even close to the real thing. But one suggestion, if possible, it to try to rent one for a bit and see if it is something you want to continue with before shelling out a lot of money to buy one. Click to expand.Hi Dave, At least one or two of the reasons attracting me to it violate the 'no religion allowed' rule of TGP so I won't go into details but you could say I wouldn't mind one day using it for 'Worship' music of my own. I'm actually also hoping to busk with it sometime in the future (I live in Wellington, NZ and don't see any Sitar buskers around here). This would be a big reason for getting one. Actually, there is a Sitar at Alastairs Music on Cuba St, might go there tomorrow and try it out. Can someone tell me more about the difficulties of tuning them?

Is it just physically hard to tune the pegs or does the difficulty lie elsewhere? Both those websites looks good although it looks like I'll have to save a lot for a quality one. I owned one for a while, used it on some film soundtracks and such. Took a few lessons with a guy from Cal Arts that was a student of Ravi Shankar's. Hardest string change in the world - I actually drew blood a couple times. I eventually sold it because 1) the instrument I had was not really a very good one, and 2) I felt the instrument required of me more than I was capable of investing at the time.

If I were to get into one again, I would go straight to the Ali Akbar College store for one (linked above) I also own - and totally love - a Jerry Jones electric 'sitar/guitar'. I've had it since the 90's, use it all the time, and it's one of my favorite guitars ever. My attraction to it comes via Steve Howe/Close To The Edge, Frank Zappa/Outside Now, Vinnie Bell on those old Stylistics records. I never use it to imitate a 'real' sitar. Click to expand.I own a saz and a zhong ruan. I used to own an oud but I sold that off a few years ago. I bought all three instruments locally (Houston).

So I got to try them out first before buying. I also experienced the frustrating tuning issues with these instruments until I met up with a group here in Houston at the local masjid that practices Arabic music. I brought over my oud and saz and explained the issue, which they knew about before I finished explaining.

The trick is to rub the tuning pegs with crayon (or a similar wax), insert the pegs into the holes and twist the pegs to build up a tacky residue. Hope I've explained this sufficiently. The saz and zhong ruan are still used by me and my wife from time to time. Lots of fun for crating different musical textures.

Line 6 variax 300 is on sale now for 299. The sitar swami by dano is unconvincing by most accounts, but some have commented that it is good for other things, I have never tried it, they still pull $50-$75 (considering they dont work) on the bay. I have a zoom 505II in the emporium, there is a website that lists a sitar patch for it, I tried it and it works ok if you are in a low tunning. There is also some company that sells barrel saddles for a tele that are supposed to emulate a sitar, they are liek 50 bucks a set, you could get those and a cheap tele from squier or rondomusic.net ($109) and have a cheap dedicated sitar axe.