Other flat bridged instruments

We have already mentioned the various North Indian lutes such as tanpura, sitar, surbahar, rudra-vina, etc. In South India we have the famous Saraswati-vina with its brass flat bridge, and the tanjore tanpura.

South Indian Saraswati-vina

New in the world of Indian music is the recent development of a new instrument in Pakistan. The Sagar Veena is an unfretted stringed instrument. It consists of nine playing strings and two drone chords, a wooden bridge with silver (never used before in any Indian stringed instrument) and individual jawari.  Each string has its own bridge as seen in the photo below.

The separate bridges of the Sagar-veena

We can see that outside of India the flat bridge is used too, and other jawari variations have been applied to create the overtones and the buzzing sound that is required.

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