Ill fitting dou/sao and "white washed" skin?

Building/Repair
#1

Hello Bachido community!

I’ve had my shamisen for a couple of years now and have had to put the hobby on hold for awhile since my plastic shitty koma finally broke into a thousand pieces (right before a performance so I had to emergency tape it together and thank god it didn’t sound much worse than it already did).

But now I’m back and I want my shamisen in great shape and so I need your help with the issues I’ve had with it since I got it. I bought my shamisen cheap from ebay and have no regrets as of yet, since I am a poor student. However, when I got it I noticed the sao and dou didn’t connect that properly. There is a gap in the front and it slides out (which is no problem when the strings are tightened but obviously not great). There seems to have been a piece of wood glued onto the sao to make it at least stay fixed, but that is now broken so that function is gone.
What do you think about this? A non-matching sao and dou is my guess. Can I make it work again, by replacing the broken piece of wood?

Then my second issue. It said so in the description of the listing when I bought it but didn’t really understand it and haven’t seen it before. The skin is “white washed”. I don’t know what this means or why it was done and if it has any ill effects for my shamisen playing. Does anyone have a clue?

I added some pictures for both issues. I hope you can help me out!

http://imgur.com/a/THL0t

1 Like
#2

Hi Daniek!

Welcome to the Bachido forum! Great to have you here! :slight_smile:

Oh no! Sorry to hear about your koma explosion before performance! Excellent that you were able to repair it just in time. That’s why every musician should always keep a roll of duct tape with them, for all musical emergencies!

Ah yes, I’ve seen that before! When getting a bunch of used shamsien on Yahoo Auction, I found many that had wooden blocks shims and shims glued to the nakago to make everything fit tightly. Discovering this was actually very comforting. I once thought shamisen were always made and repaired to maintain the stereotypically super-high standards of the Japanese aesthetic. But seeing that they were repaired with simple shims, the basic practicality was very refreshing.

Long story short, (too late) yeah, it’s probably a mismatched dou and sao, but you can just simply glue the piece of wood back on! :slight_smile: If it feels too tight, you can gently sand it down a bit with some sandpaper. If you find that the neck angle is causing the strings to buzz, you may want to try gluing a shim on the other side of the sao in order to raise the sao a bit (so the connection of the sao’s base to the dou is more centered)

Ah, if my vision is correct, that skin appears to be goat skin. Perhaps it’s just treated in a certain way to be completely white, but there it is! :wink: It shouldn’t have any ill effects. If you like the sound of it, that’s all that really matters!

Cheers!
Kyle

1 Like
#3

Hello Kyle!

Thank you for your insight! It’s surprising to me that they would be fixed this way but indeed it makes it a lot easier for me to fix so that’s great to hear! I will try that out.

Also about the skin… that’s very good to hear! I was scared that they’d done something weird to it but that makes sense. It still looks a little weird up close though, haha!

Hope you have a nice day!

#4

Hi Daniek
Just looking at the photos, is the sao pushed all the way into the dou?
If the neck is not pushed all the way thru the soundbox, it will be loose – in addition to shim issues. Good luck.
Cheerio
Dave

#5

Hi Dave,
The sao is definitely pushed in as far as it can. The back fits very nicely after all, there’s just a gap in the front.
Thanks for your insight!

© 2020 Kyle Abbott