tsitsanis

[jeffshuniak]

I just bought "to xapama" yesterday, looks like an 8 stringer on the cover, but its also an altered photo. (cloudy red pic)

I also got this really cool live album and a vamvaraphe album that may be a compilation actually, I thought it was him with tsitanis and the skinny guy... but it appears to be songs from different recordings. its called "alplepwuvua!" ha ha ha yeh that works.

[vkioulaphides]

You may have seen Tsitsanis holding a bouzouki with the usual, "default" tuners (a.k.a. 8-string, mandolin tuners) that Greek luthiers used as a matter of course, while only stringing the instrument with 6 strings. Remember our chat regarding "alternate" saddle and nut?

[jeffshuniak]

aahh. perhaps I may take your suggestion more seriously... I mentioned it to dino, he said I could just use the same bridge and nut and deal with the extra space.... maybe I will ask, more specifically , maybe as he finishes, to make me another bridge and nut...

[Alekos]

Only small note: the tradition of using mandolin 8str. tunners on 6str. bouzoukia comes to the present; for example Zozef still makes bouzoukia with 8string. tunners. More info about Tsitsanis is here.

[jeffshuniak]

thanks for that tsitanis website.. how very nice,,, he used to play the mandolin too!

[vkioulaphides]

Well, not quite, Jeff. His father played the "family mandolin" —but forbade his kids to ever touch it!

This brings me to my favorite rant and rave, namely that during Tsitsanis Sr.'s time, the most common amateur instrument in Greece would have been the mandolin, NOT the bouzouki

And yes, said mandolin was retro-fitted with a long neck and converted to Tsitsanis Jr.'s first bouzouki.

This is a nice site but curiously vague and inaccurate to call itself "The Official Site". First of all, for example, the actual name of Vassilis' father was not "Tsarouhas" as the site claims; he was simply a shoemaker, specifically a "maker of tsarouhia, i.e. the kind of shoes worn traditional by shepherds in Greece. The list of minor discrepancies goes on... I'd be curious to find out who exactly administrates the site.

[jeffshuniak]

I was wondering how he converted it...

[vkioulaphides]

Story has it that he (Tsitsanis Sr.) took it to an Italian luthier doing business in Thessaly, who then removed the original neck and grafted the new, long one, into the same neck-block; perfectly feasible, although of course not necessarily advisable.

But those were times of great privation and poverty and (much unlike the relatively luxurious culture we all enjoy today) times in which the option of "oh, let me just get another instrument" was inconceivable. So, people maintained, restored, converted, adjusted, inherited, traded, did hack-jobs themselves etc. rather than just start from scratch.