Concert Zither Rehab

I spotted this zither in the literal dusty corner of a music store in June, and ended up scoring it. It was pretty messed up, with cracks on top and bottom, as well as badly scalloped and buzzy frets. It had all of its strings, though, as well as spares, and there was no really bad warping or damage.

 Original condition with cracks:

 

 

First task was to get the strings off.

 

 

The bridge and nut(?) were just pieces of soft wire held in their grooves by the strings. I tried to keep the strings in order by stringing them up onto one of the wires like so many trout. After all of them were off, I boiled them like you sometimes hear bass players doing- complete new sets are well over $100. I wish I took a picture, because the water came out completely yellow and scummed over with the finger grease of decades past...

 

Once the strings were set aside, I pulled out all of the various many tuning pins, as well as the machines for the 5 fretboard strings. The body of the instrument was scrubbed with water, and metal parts with wet polishing cloths.

Maker's mark?

 

 

The top crack, as well as some separation of the binding around the sound hole, I was able to make imperceptible with wood filler and a brown sharpie. The crack on the back needed to be glued, and sharpied over as well, but came out more noticeable. I filled the worst of the frets with tiny dabs of JB-Weld, then carefully filed them to shape, which has been working out so far- the buzzing is gone.

 

I did replace the fretboard strings: I took the old ones in and got guitar strings of matching gauges. Stringing the harp strings was a minor nightmare. They're tuned in fifths, but different charts I was looking at often disagreed about the exact octaves. A lot of the old strings were just too far gone, but I ended up making do with the many extras. It seems normal to use a mixture of steel and wound nylon.

Lots of the tuning pins were too loose to hold tune. I ended up putting a little receipt paper in every slot. I also couldn't find a tuning hammer that would work with them: the ordinary autoharp one is too small. However, I was able to find a hex socket that fit them fine, as well as an allen key that it would jam down onto. So, below you can see the custom tuning hammer. I also decided I needed to put new latches on the case, since I don't have its old key.

 

 

 

It polished up really well.

 

 

It's said that most zithers like this in the U.S. are either from the 1880's or something more like the 1920's-30's. I have also read that oval sound holes were only common on German/Austrian instruments, and compared to others online from the 1880's, it seems reasonable that this might be that old. Hopefully I'll learn to play it a bit...