morin huur horsehair restringing

[samC=']

Finnaly found some horse, long enough to restring my morin huur (35 inches long, 1/8 less wouldn't have fit :? ), and I would share this :

the original strings were in fact nylon ones, and must say the sound is now really softer, not regarding power, but rather timber, and the pressure needed REALLY different. Won't say harder or easier to play, but maybe more balanced regarding the tension of the bow.

Big one was made of about 180 little strings, and the little 125. I first followed what I read on a website about morin huur strings :
150 hairs for the big one, 120 for the little , and 90 for the bow, the total amount supposed to be 360 hairs, as the degrees of acircle... I'm not much in such symbolism

But I wasn't able to tune the strings to F - Bb, has done before. Even by transposing the 5th to other tones : what ever I tried the low string was too loose, and the thin one too tighten... No way to go further than 1 and 1/2 tones and get the MH playable.

I used the "original" number, 180 and 125 and it's OK as this.

As a tip : the hairs where hard to bring all together and one end, and to keep tighten all the same way to tie them from bridge to nut, and some where a bit shorter.
So I started with nearly 10 hairs more in each string, and removed the ones not tied later.

SAM C='

[hjernespiser]

On my morin khuur the ends of the strings are braided. On the head side they are braided all the way to about just above the nut. I haven't taken it apart yet, but I think on the bottom side they are even braided together as if to make one string. Makes it easier I imagine to anchor them.

I imagine the issues you have with tuning may be related to the tension on the individual threads which braiding will probably solve.

[throatsinger]

We spent a few hours over 2 nights recently replacing the horsehair strings on my igil, with 2 and 4 lb nylon. A thicker gauge nylon was braided to both ends of each string.

Whew, now that's a project! Plays much better now, though, and looks great. Hope I don't need to do it again for a good while.

[jarilmon]

Hi all,

I've done my bit of stringing and re-stringing morin huur and igil. I made some insrtuments of my own and have tried horsehair (quite thick, thicker than the hair in my mongolian huur originally has) and .15 mm fishing line first. The trick really seems to be to get an even tension to all the hairs (approximately) and to GET THEM STRAIGHT. Now I have learned to be more careful and have some nice-sounding strings made of horsehair and .20 mm fishing line, which is better than the thinner one. The amount of hairs I have found convenient for tuning my instruments to about D to F# when a fourth apart, has been something like 40-50 and 50-60 hairs for the strings using the horse.

Now I'm in the middle of a sacrilege trial, re-stringing my instruments with nylon instead of the horse, which sounded really nice. But recently I had a bad experience hor hide-faced igil with genuine horsehair strings behaves in hot and humid climate in a small club.

Now I'm finding the following numbers of hairs quite good, using the .20 mm nylon:

100 and 70 hairs for the huur to play fourth apart at appr. C-F
70 and 50 hairs for my hide-face igil to play at C-F

Still testing, though

JI

[oddmusic]

Any pics of your instruments you made Jari?

Don't worry too much about the sacreliege of nylon ;-) HHT and Chirgilchin use them too, at least on the road. It's helps with the humidity, and other factors and still sounds good. But keep your rosin handy, when the air starts getting wet, your bow will start slipping on the nylon strings and you'll have a more challenging time of getting sound out of them if they aren't vibrating too much.

[jarilmon]

Hi John,

here's a snapshot of my instruments [img]

Ikil on the left, lenght 82 cm, Jigil on the right, length 113 cm. Ikil is an ancestral form of the Morin Huur, Jigil is the product of my 2-yr project of builging myself an Igil - the final shape turned out to be quite interesting and the process was not too easy. I'd recommend anyone making an Igil the traditional way, using one good piece of some suitable coniferous wood.

I watched some of your videos (interesting) and noted that perhaps you use a piezo mike attached to the skin face? The sound is nice, I've used a condenser but am still troubled by the hissing of the bow and strings, though it is the natural sound of that instrument. Well, I'm still working on on the correct type of strings, suitable distance of the mike, EQing etc. to find the optimal sound. Anyway, am I right about your microphone setting?

JI[/img]

[jarilmon]

[/img]

[jarilmon]

Well, I tend to fail attaching images, just check the URL:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/jarilmon/images/instruments

I'll put up some details of the instruments in the future, near future I hope.

JI

[throatsinger]

Cool. Interesting and unique igil design.

Thanks,

[oddmusic]

I watched some of your videos (interesting) and noted that perhaps you use a piezo mike attached to the skin face? JI[/img]

Hi JI,
Interesting instruments you've made! maybe we will hear them someday too :-)

Yes, it's a piezo, it is a very thin and flexible strip that slides under the bridge and is held in place by the string tension. It produces a little more bass sound than a traditional mic but it gets very little feedback, which was a concern to me because of some of the equipment I use to get my sound. It's not the perfect solution for me, just the best one so far, but part of the fun is experimenting, though it can be a long process.

[jarilmon]

Well, the shape my instrument ended up to take is the reason why I call it Jigil. However, the sound is like a "regular" igil, compared with the original tuvan-made igils of my friends. The piezo mike thing is interesting, we were wondering with a bandmate of mine whether it is possible to use a piezo mike in a leatherface.

I am struggling to take the time to make my homepage with more details of the instruments and sound samples, I'll let you know.

JI

[throatsinger]

This is the pickup we went with for igil and doshpuluur: http://schattendesign.com/guitar.htm

Working very nicely so far!

[jarilmon]

Looks promising, I should have/will try some of those if possible.

JI

[jarilmon]

Hey, check the share your music thread for sound samples.

JI