I like to collect instruments that are built very weirdly, so when I first saw this at an auction, it immediately caught my eye. It may look normal from afar, but there are a few very weird details. It has a weird looking heel and the heel is also quite long for a shamisen, it has metal strings, and some of the paint is on the skin. When I saw this, I wanted it and so I got it for around $30. Now that it’s here, I found some more weird things. When the shamisen arrived, I looked in the pouch and found 2 wood things and also a set of guzheng strings. The nut holding the strings up has massive groves that shows a light piece of wood under the paint. It has an odd looking neo and does not come with a doukake. The base part of it felt a bit small and the neck felt a bit thin, but I don’t know much about shamisen dimentions. Seeing the long heel made me think that it was a kokyu, but it’s way too tall to be a kokyu, with this being around 39 inches.
Maybe the previous owner Frankensteined a kokyu out of other instrument pieces? 
Thread box looks really narrow like a sanshin and the heel isn’t long enough for it to be a kokyu I guess… Someone took inspiration from few other instruments and made a shamisen i guess 
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