Monday, August 29, 2016

Sudanese Rababa

A little while ago I made this Sudanese rababa for a local player. It is a 5 string North African instrument sort of like a lyre or small harp.  The way it is played is very peculiar to the instrument and probably varies by player. This is actually a copy of the one the player had made for himself and probably expresses his preferences.  I only used my intuition to make the instrument louder acoustically, since his was mainly electric.  Also, the electric guitar style headstock was my idea, mainly so that the strings followed a straight line to the tuning post and with a proper break angle at the nut. 







The bridge is peculiar in that you can slide the forward portion (the one with the white dots) to change the key of the instrument.



This is my customer giving us a little demo.



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