Yeah!
A troubled soul contacted me recently, asking if could repair his Mohan Veena. Now, to those who were enjoying teenage in the mid 90s, Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt winning the Grammy on his acoustic guitar improvisation – the Mohan Veena – was a big thing. At least to me it was. Why? I don’t know. His name and the name of the instrument just got stuck in my memory.
So, after all these years, fancy being bumped by a pleasant memory!
I took one look at it and I said that I would do it. The tailpiece had somehow split but it seemed a simple enough break. And so, I got to work – on the instrument and not just the tailpiece.
For the uninitiated, the Mohan Veena has umpteen strings (yeah, I didn’t bother to count), but most of those are sitar strings which pick up the resonance of the heavier strings vibrating above and start vibrating too (sympathetic vibrations). The instrument is played employing a slide.
I cut off all the strings and then cleaned each ferrule and string post. The fretboard – which doesn’t have any fretwires and sees no fretting – was cleaned too. The headstock was dusted, cleaned and polished and the floating bridge was cleaned and oiled.
Here are a few before and after photographs
The last photograph in this sequence shows a little interesting detail, Which I feel I must highlight.
At the nut and the bridge, there is no nut or saddle but a thin brass pipe, easily bent by a finger’s strength. That strings actually ride over these and do not crush them is rather interesting. Both of these were just sitting in their grooves, ready to fall off. With the owner’s permission, I glued these in so one could have two less pieces to worry about. But this was done not before I polished up the little brass pipes to a warm shine (You can see that in the last two photographs.
The tailpiece came last with both pieces going together perfectly, except for a little missing sliver of wood on the top of the tailpiece.
The two became one and so I thought
The owner happily took his instrument home, only to call me a couple of days later, and tell me that the joint had failed!
Interestingly enough, he had a second Veena, the back of which had come undone, and which someone had already tried to fix once and failed. I took a look at the globs of glue sitting in the open back and expressed my inability to be able to do anything with it.
Now this had a metal tailpiece.
To get the first Veena in working condition, it was decided to replace the broken tailpiece with the metal one. The operation was duly performed, and successfully at that.
A new (wooden) tailpiece has been ordered, and till such time as when it arrives, the metal one will have to hold strong.
👏👏