Mohan Veena

Here's a little diversion away from all of the recent concert posts (I'm finally caught up on March Madness, at least for now).  Harry Manx is a musician who blends blues, folk, and Hindustani classical music. He was born on the Isle of Man where he spent his childhood and now lives on Saltspring Island, in British Columbia.  He plays a mohan veena, which according to Wikipedia is is a modified Archtop guitar held in the lap like a slide guitar.  It consists of 20 strings (three melody strings, five drone strings strung to the peghead, and twelve sympathetic strings strung to tuners mounted on the side of the neck).  A gourd (or the tumba) is screwed into the back of the neck for improved sound quality and vibration. 

A friend of mine, another Canadian as it turns out, attempted to build his own mohan veena by adding three drone strings below the E string on a "beat up old guitar" and sticking an old speaker into the sound hole. He sent me a picture of the result.

So that I can hear the sound produced by his homemade adaptation, he recorded the sample below using a dollar-store microphone, but I don't think the result turned out too bad, considering the DIY nature of the whole experiment.

You gotta love that drone . . .