dinsdag 22 mei 2012

Painting and varnishing finished!

It took quite some time to repaint and varnish the zither. Here is the result.


The back

I filled the cracks with wood putty, sanded them down, applied a new layer of black paint, and several layers of blank varnish.

before:after:

nice and shiny:



















The front

I glued and filled the cracks and sanded them down very carefully. The idea was to keep the old appearance of the zither, but stil giving it some protection from further decay.
With a very thin new layer of black paint, the gold decorations stayed visible, and I finished it off with several layers of blank varnish.

before:after:

from the side:



















Next: the tuning pins and the strings...

donderdag 5 april 2012

Zither sound

I have been searching on YouTube for the sound of the zither.

Etienne de Lavaulx from Melbourn on his 5-chord mandolin zither:


How about Ekim Beau on his 126 string (!) cross harp zither:


And this is a guzheng, a Chinese zither:


maandag 2 april 2012

Overview

Now that I finished gluing it back together, it is time to take a step back and look at the zither:



Yes, there is still a lot of work to be done.

New parts !

I found a zither company in Germany: Zitherbau K.Marko, http://zitherbau-k-marko.de/
New parts are on their way:
  • Stimmwirbel (tuning pins)
  • Stimmschlüssel (tuning key)
  • Saitenöl (oil for cleaning and protecting the strings)

zondag 1 april 2012

More gluing

I decided to reuse the original back plate. Although it broke into several pieces when I removed it, I think with some careful gluing I can get it back on. I wonder what this will do to the sound of the zither though...


The stone blocks are there to press the back plate on the braces.


Those were all the wood clamps I could find. :-)

You can see the glue oozing out at the joints. The polyurethane glue foams a lot, but once dried, it can easily be removed. I will sand and fill any imperfections later, before I put on a new layer of paint.

vrijdag 30 maart 2012

More about the tuning

I did a little research on the 10 strings per octave in the melody section:
 

C - C# - D - E - F - F# - G - G# - A - B

It looks like this is quite common on the "5/21" fretless zithers: 5 chords, 2 times 10 plus 1 melody. It is called "partially chromatic", which is diatonic (C - D - E - F - G - A - B) with one or more accidentals (in this case C#, F#, G#).

So why these three accidentals?
I can explain the C# and the F#: they are in the A and D chord in the chord section of the zither. For the G# string Jan Castelein, assistant engineer at Galaxy Studios, gave me the hint that it may have someting to do with the raised 5th (augmented triad, two major thirds).

Looking at the chords:
  • A-chord: A-C#-E, with raised 5th is A-C#-E#
  • D-chord: D-F#-A, with raised 5h is D-F#-A#, no, there is no A# string on the zither
  • F-chord: F-A-C, with raised 5th is F-A-C#
  • G-chord: G-B-D, with raised 5th is G-B-D#
  • C-chord: C-E-G, with raised 5th is C-E-G#

How about minor chords?
  • A-minor: A-C-E
  • D-minor: D-F-A
  • F-minor: F-Ab-C
  • G-minor: G-Bb-D, no, there is no Bb (A#) string on the zither
  • C-minor: C-Eb-G, no, there is no Eb (D#) string on the zither

Hmmm....

donderdag 29 maart 2012

Gluing it back together

With all bugs removed, it was time to glue the zither back together. The original glue was probably hide glue, which I do not have. I decided to look for a modern alternative.

An obvious choice would have been common white wood glue ("houtlijm"), but I found out that this is based on polyvinyl acetate (PVA), which tends to creep when under constant load. And 41 strings will put a lot of constant force on the wood! So I decided to use a polyurethane glue, which is very strong and does not creap, as long as you clamp it properly for at least 4 hours.
This website has some good information about using glues for musical instruments:
http://www.apsimplepsaltery.com/glues.htm

First I glued the side of the frame:

And next the braces:

zondag 25 maart 2012

Woodworm killer

Ok, this is some nasty stuff:



I treated all wooden parts from the zither with it ... outside ... with gloves ...
There were probably no woodworms left in the wood, but if there were, they did not survive this shower. >;-)

Strings and back removed

I removed the strings and the back panel of the zither to work on the wood.


As you can see, there are some nasty cracks in the front panel. The back panel had two large cracks and did not survive the removal in one piece.
The small white dots all over the front panel are holes from woodworm (!). Probably old, and dead or moved on by now, but I will treat the wood with woodworm killer just to be sure.

zaterdag 24 maart 2012

donderdag 22 maart 2012

"Arpista" zither at Germanisches Nationalmuseum

I found the zither on the website of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum:

It was made around 1930. If my zither is from the same year, that would make it 82 years old!

Strings and tuning

There are two groups of strings on the zither:

Chords

20 strings: 5 chords of 3 strings, with an additional bass string at each chord
  • chord '5' (A chord): E - A - C# - A
  • chord '4' (D chord): D - A - F# - D
  • chord '3' (F chord): F - C - A - F
  • chord '2' (G chord): D - B - G - G
  • chord '1' (C chord): E - C - G - C
The strings made me think of the (open) strings on a cello: A-D-G-C (fiths intervals). But there is an additional F string/chord, a minor third from the D.


Melody

21 strings:
C - C# - D - E - F - F# - G - G# - A - B - C - C# - D - E - F - F# - G - G# - A - B - C

Each octave has 10 strings: the D# and A# are not there. This made me wonder if this instrument has some kind of strange tuning:
  • Chromatic would have been 12 strings (the same as on a piano)
  • Diatonic would have been 7 strings (only the "white notes" on a piano).

I am still searching for this 10-string scale. For now I assume that the D# and A# are left out because they are not part of the chords on the left. But then it is strange that the G# is there on the melody section (and not in the chord section)...

woensdag 21 maart 2012

Zither pages


Some websites about zithers:

How it all started


This zither has been in my familie for quite some time. My aunt bought it at a flea market and later gave it to my sister. The last 24 years, it was stored in the garden shed at my parents house. Last month I decided to take it with me to clean and tune it. What started as a fun project, quickly became an addiction. :-)

Here is some information about the zither:

  • Arpista Concert Guitarr-Zither, made in Germany
  • fretless, 5 chords
  • 41 strings (20 on the chord section, 21 on the melody section)