Should I be concerned?

So I recently looked at the bottom of my shamisen and I noticed some residue and the skin looks funny. I’m super worried but is it something I should be concerned about or is it nothing!!!


Has it always looked like this or did the skin reach down to the edge of the darker stain when you first received it?

If the skin edge was lower then the adhesive is failing and it will need to be re-skinned.

Is there any way I can make the paste and stick the little part back? Or can I use tape?

I don’t know. It’s theoretically possible but would it affect skin tension/sound? :thinking:

I would say as a temporary fix only. Tape does not have the tensile strength of a glued skin and it would fail eventually, unless you liberally used industrial grade tape but who would want to do that to a beautiful shamisen?

Yeah, the skin slipped almost a whole centimeter there, and pretty much killed that side of the dou.
The correct solution is to reskin that side of the dou.

However… you can try, and there is a huge emphasis on “try” because it’s quite risky, to stretch some of it back and reglue it. It’s risky especially because you don’t have the knowledge of a Luthier and don’t know what to look for, or the limits of the stretching of a skin.

So, if you want to try it, and have an understanding of the risk of breaking the skin and having to reskin that side anyway, I can give you instructions.

Apart from the risk, you need to know that the anchor you use to stretch the skin — and by anchor I mean the material you will glue to the skin to extend it’s size, so you have something to grab to and pull — will remain there, glued to the edge of the skin, after the repair is done, and will be visible. The cost of the materials for this should be about $15 at the most.

Let me know if you need instructions.

Yes please can you give me the instructions.

I’m curious if this is the case for players outside of Japan. I can’t fathom how this can be done for such a small price.

A whole lot of creativity, the kind only a designer can bring forward. :laughing:
Jokes apart, I’ll search my collection for a dou that’s yet to be cleaned, with an unglued side similar to that, and make a video with the process.
I think that will be better than a very very long written explanation.
I will report back in a few days.

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Lacking one with the correct ungluing, I had to take one with one side ruined, and wet the good side to reproduce the issue you have. Now I need to let it dry for a day or two before I can do the process and record it on video.

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Thank you so much for your help