Silent shamisen?

Did anybody tried to make one or seen one?
I currently have skinless shamisen and thinking to create a partial deck with koma to hold the strings and provide the surface for the bachi strike. Maybe even cover partial deck with cloth so it looks like a real skin from far away.
Any thoughts?

Best regards,
Alexey

There is another option: to skin shamisen with nylon mesh drum heads. Peoples done it for banjos, seems to be working very well.

Do you mean something like Kevin has in this video?

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Not exactly, This is a silent koma to mute “standard” shamisen.
What I think about is an “electric only” shamisen with no capacity of producing loud sound without amplification, similar to silent guitar or violin.

Here the link:
Silent Banjo Sistem

I would say I’ve never heard of such a thing except I stumbled across the デコカラ / Decokara sanshin a few minutes ago. (It’s at the 9:55 mark in the video below)

Yep, something like this but with full size body.
I have ordered mesh drum head already. :sunglasses:

But what about the snapping sound which is an essential part of the Tsugaru style?

I am hoping to have it as the mesh would be tight as normal skin and transfer the sound to pickup. Sound reduction of 80% expected.

Was it the Remo Silentstroke you ordered? I saw a a demo of it on YT today and it seems heaven-sent for beginning-drummers (especially the people who live with or next to them :rofl:). I think Remo’s claim of 90% noise reduction is overblown but it definitely reduces the loud percussion to neighbor-friendly levels. It will be interesting to see how something like that works on a shamisen.

Yep, this is the one. Curious myself