Tsugaru strings on chuuzao shamisen?

General
#1

Hi everyone, I’m pleased to finally have a shamisen of my own to learn on. I snagged a nice used chuuzao shamisen from Yahoo Auctions. It’s thanks to this site that I learned enough about the instrument to take the leap on an auction. So thanks everyone for being part of such a great community, and thanks to Kyle for his efforts to introduce shamisen to an English-speaking audience.

I have a quick question, though. I’ve got a set of tsugaru strings, and I’m wondering if it’s safe to put them on non-tsugaru shamisen. Mainly I’m worried that the increased string thickness could put too much pressure on the skin, increasing the chance of it breaking. My assumption is that it’s probably safe, but if anyone has any insights I’d love to hear them.

Thanks!

#2

The itomaki WILL slip alot and it’ll put unnecessary amounts of stress on the little shami. I am almost positive you can get the proper strings from Chords Canada or Ebay. If you want to do it in the short term to fix your shamisen jones, then OK, but I definitely wouldnt leave them on for any great length of time, and wouldn’t tune higher than B.

#3

I would have to agree with Johnathan Tarajcak! Generally it’s not a good idea to string a Chuzao with strings made for a futozao. As Johnathan says its (probably) ok for short term and if you are ordering the right kind of string you should be ok. I have one idea for ya…does your string set include extra ni no Ito? If so (and to be safe) you might want to try just stringing it up with two ni no itos in place of Ichi and ni. Just a thought. It will be awkward but at least will gaurentee no extra strain on the skin, itomaki and no extra damage to any notches where the larger string might scrape away at.

#4

Thanks Johnathan and Kevin, I’ll just order new strings and do it right.

In which case, I have an extra ichi no ito and itchi no ito for tsugaru shamisen. Rather than let them go to waste, I’ll toss them in the mail for anyone who’ll put them to good use.

Thanks!

#5

In my experience the tsugaru ni no ito and san no ito are only slightly thicker than jiuta ito. On the other hand the san no ito is significantly thicker and pulls a lot harder. Moreover on all the chuzao ito maki I have seen the hole for the string is too small for a tsugaru ichi no ito anyway.

#6

Hi Jack,

Sorry to make this more confusing but I use tsugaru strings on my chuuzao, you don’t get enough practice hitting that huge ichi-no-ito otherwise. It may do some damage but I haven’t seen any yet.

© 2020 Kyle Abbott