I know not many people are familiar with the bandurria, but I have no where else to turn. I have several bandurrias - two made in Spain, the other in the Philippines. The Spanish instruments have a fixed bridge; the Philippine adjustable. Both fixed bridge instruments suffer from inaccurate bridge placement, causing the low strings - particularly the lowest - to be untunable. Fretting the 12th fret produces an octave plus (ie, sharp tone). There's currently a Spanish made bandurria on eBay. I asked the seller about the low string and he confirmed that it, too, is sharp like mine. This is really puzzling. My local luthier thinks the bridges were placed with nylon strings in mind, even though bandurrias use steel strings. I'm having the bridge moved on one of the instruments. As far as I can tell, both Spanish instruments appear to be otherwise very well made. The Philippine instrument, while tunable and still playable, suffers from a bad sound board warp, so it has a limited life expectancy.
My question: does anyone know what's going on? Does anyone have a fixed bridge bandurria that is fully tunable?
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