Having trouble with the hole placement on my itomaki

[Kimetsu]

Hi, I’m relatively new to the world of shamisen. Been wanting to play one for years and my first one came in today!

One problem though, I don’t understand the hole placement on my itomaki.

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If the image isn’t visible, the order is
•-------
----•—
•-------

I’ve watched Kyle’s video on how to string a shamisen, and the holes on his are placed differently.

I don’t know if it’s just the style (mine’s a nagauta), or if I placed the itomaki in the wrong spots, but if anyone knows how to string it this way I would greatly appreciate it!

(UPDATE) Aside from the holes, it turns out my itomaki are severely worn down. The shamisen I bought was labeled as vintage, so I probably should’ve expected there to be some form of wear and tear. Anyone know a good way to increase the friction between the itomaki and the zagane? I cannot afford new itomaki at the moment. Thank you!

[Aleksandar_Antonovic]

Search the phrase, “slipping itomaki” and see what’s out there as I’ve seen many people ask the same question. I haven’t had that issue yet so I never read through them, haha.

As for stringing them, just wrap the strings untill they are in a correct position. (That worked for me without any issues)
I hope this was at least a bit helpful!

Cheers!

[Sentsuki_Rai]

If you are confused about the order of string placement, do the following-
Swap the position of the top 2 itomaki.
So it’ll become
-----.- 1st itomaki - thickest string
-.----- 2nd itomaki - middle string
-.----- 3rd itomaki - thinnest string

And it really doesn’t matter with the order string placement so much, as long as you can easily tune them and restring them. I personally follow 1st itomaki for thickest string, 2nd for thinnest string, 3rd for middle string. In this way it’s easier to tune the thick and middle string as they require a little bit more strength which you can get by placing the thumb in the tuning peg box.

Don’t mind the shamisen build, it’s a diy😅

As of increasing friction, you can use chalk dust and some violin players use rosin.

[pboman]

Sentsuki, What kind of strings are you using in this picture? Where did you purchase it?

[Sentsuki_Rai]

Hello…
Those are fishing lines of thickness corresponding to the original strings(almost same thickness I guess). They don’t sound same but it’s fine for practice and they last really long.
As of buying, I bought it locally in a grocery store.

[Multimikstar]

Here is a video for your problem with the worn down Itomaki (its in german but it has subtitles which you can auto-translate to english) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0L3ZJSBMXk

[Kimetsu]

Thanks for the advice everyone! Figured out how to string it with the hole placement. I put the thickest string on top, the thinnest string on the middle, and the middle string on the bottom.

As for the slipping itomaki, I’m looking into getting some violin rosin, or some other substitute like rubber.

[Phil_White]

It’s called violin peg compound.