If one has a shamisen with a three piece neck, is it ok to store it in the case fully assembled? Or is it best that I break it down into separate parts every time I’m done playing?
Hi Derik
although I got a mitsuori-sao, I keep it always assembled (for 2.5y now). No problems so far. You rise the risk of scuff/wear of the joints by disassembling often, me thinks.
Ok great!! Thanks very much!
That’s true, some very good japanese players, who were giving a workshop here only disassembled their shamisen for flying back. Seems logic, humans are lazy after all 
No seriously, I also share the concerns about wearing of the joints.
Thanks for your response. I feel better now that you two said it was ok.
Had mine for ten years now and only take it apart to fly. It’s also horrendously annoying to re-tune and stretch the strings out after reassembling, so it’s best to keep it together for ease of playing.
Good question!
I guess laziness is the really good reason. Probably most important is to loosen the strings! If you do that, I can’t off the top of my head think of a really good reason to take a shamisen apart any more than that for storage.
Not sure if wear of the joints is a huge concern. Shamisen were originally designed to be taken apart because of regular travel, so they’ve been made that way for a long time and it’s kind of one of the core things in shamisen craftmanship. I’d suppose the shamisen material is fairly durable. More of an issue is how well the joints fit, I’d think. Reportedly high-end shamisen have extremely well fitting joints, so I would expect high-end instruments to tolerate being taken apart many many times before the joints become loose or anything, with low-end instruments maybe showing sings of wear if it was taken apart a lot over the years. I think joints that would quickly become loose from regular use would be seen as a sign of a low quality instrument. (Probably we have some of those on the market too.)
Thanks for all these great replies!!