How are the 13 sympathetic strings tuned on the Coral sitar?
A. The gauges of the sympathetic strings are all .010. and a harp wrench is used for the tuning process. The longest and lowest string is tuned an octave above the high E of a standard tuned guitar. From there the strings are tuned in half steps. This is just a starting point and experimentation can yield some great sounds. More recently we have tuned the instrument with a “drop D” tuning and the sympathetic strings to a D7sus chord which is as follows – longest string to shortest string.