I’ve had my shamisen for half a year now, but one of my itomaki always slips which is incredibly annoying as this means I may have to re-tune a couple times per practice session. Is this a problem with the pegs themselves or should I find some goop to put in the hole and have them stick better?
I had similar issue with my nagauta before.
In order to fix it I have used a rosin dissolved in an alcohol (Very often used for soldering) and put a drop in each contact area. If you do the same let it dry out of the hole as if you leave them inserted they would most likely stuck.
Worked well on wooden itomaki’s. No slipping anymore.
For my ivory or fake ivory itomaki it did not worked, so I ended up loading them into lathe chuck and removing all Wear steps and re-creating the proper shape using piece of the sand paper.
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You can get “peg sticky” for violin or cello for a couple of bucks.
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Before you go getting your itomaki all sticky, confirm that you are tuning properly. You may be doing this already, but you need to use your thumb as an anchor and get a tight fit. The easiest way is to over tune, then turn it back the other way, and really use your thumb anchor&d in the tenjin to get a tight fit.
If you are already doing it properly and its slipping, then yeah the best thing is to get a shamisen store to re lathe them, or use the violin resin method as a stop gap.
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Thanks for the tip. I’ve always tried to tune the proper way but I don’t think my left hand grip strength is strong enough, so I end up having to tune and push that middle peg in like a violin.