Persian Quality Santoor Santur Dulcimer String Musical Instrument

I gave this unit five stars because it exceeded my expectations. I am a long time musician with about 40 years of amateur playing experience. I enjoy western music from symphonic to rock and blues. My primary instruments are guitar and piano. I decided to delved into some different instruments and scales while learning about other styles of music. This lead me to the Santur.While I do not have a baseline for this particular instrument (I don't have an $800 unit to compare it with), the quality is good and solid. The staining through the sound holes could be more thorough and the tuning pegs could be driven in more consistently. The sound quality in comparing to the instruments I have heard on line. The santur came with a case, a pair of mezrabs, a tuning wrench and two lengths of replacement strings. There was no documentation, you are on your own on that point. The instrument is of good quality, the case and tuning wrench are not of comparable quality. The case is good for storage, it would not last as a gig case.It took me about 40 minutes to get the first tuning in place which is not too bad considering I had never tuned or played the instrument before (tuned to Shur Sol, G). One test: I let the unit sit for about 10 hours before tuning and after the instrument had 3 days of acclimation, the tuning held which is a major plus.One of the bridges came off during shipping (low E<b) it took a little figuring out as to where it goes. There was a little residual mark where I think was, but that did not match the picture. However, I noticed a number of players with the Eb in a similar position. Also note that the bridges are designed to move and that I performed little setup in that respect during tuning. I expect that will take more effort and playing to achieve reasonable and comfortable instrument setup. There are many common tuning configurations and obviously a lot of playing styles.Shipping to New York was slow but I noticed most of the time the unit was NYC customs. Packing was a little weird in that it was just heavily bubble wrapped and not in a box, but it survived the trip from Istanbul well.Overall it sounds wonderful and I was able to improvise a fair of amount of music in a short time (probably enough to offend accomplished players). Learning a new scale system with 1/4 tones will be a great exploration (as well as resisting the urge to tune to conventional western 12 tone scale). Be forewarned, as an English speaker, most of the playing examples on You Tube are in Farsi.

Admittedly, I don't know much about hammered dulcimers; I bought this as a gift. It's the cheapest one I could find that still looked of some quality, so I'd consider this an "entry level" hammered dulcimer. The quality of the workmanship seems decent, if minimalistic in form. It definitely has a distinctive sound, like a small harpsichord. The case is good but the instrument does have some room to move around inside so I would still handle it carefully. Shipping from Turkey was faster than expected; I believe it only took about two weeks to get to me (Northwest Indiana).I did notice that the bridges are independent pegs, one for each line of strings, which has me somewhat concerned as they can move around freely and I would suspect that would affect the tuning. They are mainly held in place by each line of 4 strings, so it might hard to keep them in place and tune the instrument correctly. There are also no dots or lines indicating exactly where the pegs should be placed.Time will tell as I'm about to present this as a Xmas gift, so I'll update my review later.[Edit]I'm updating this to 5 stars. I got it for my mom who wanted a hammered dulcimer, but she couldn't figure it out. So recently I borrowed it back and watched some vids and charts online, and figured out how to tune and play a Santoor in a couple hours. Tuning took most of that time as the left bridge positioning has to be adjusted until you get the perfect octave on each side. Even while tuning it, I noticed how wonderful the acoustic chamber sounded, almost like a giant cave in a very small space, and when done it sounded amazing. I found it intuitive and easy to play, and while the construction is undecorated it does have the feel and look of a quality instrument. I normally play electric bass and I'm very impressed with this. Enough to want to steal it for myself. ;)For the price, I'd have to recommend this very strongly. But, be prepared to learn something pretty new and to spend a lot of time on tuning, especially if you don't already know about Santoors and how they differ from american dulcimers.

I am not a professional musician, so I asked a professional one from Iran to take a look at the Santoor, and he confirmed its quality. I live in the US, and when I received Santoor from Turkey, I noticed that the Santoor was tuned perfectly. Tuning a santoor takes at least 2 hours, and it is a difficult task. Unfortunately, one of the bridges was broken--probably during the shipment-- so I asked for a return, but the seller sent me two bridges immediately, which solved the problem. I couldn't be happier getting a Santoor (a Persian instrument) in the US with this great quality and customer service.

As a displaced Irooni I was really interested in getting a santoor for myself and my family. When this one came in it came with the santoor, hammers, tuner, and two types of wire for replacing broken wires. First of all, gorgeous cherrywood color, with a solid varnish over to protect from weathering. Strings were basically all tuned except for one which was easily fixable. The hammers are just a bit flimsy and don't match up to the better quality of the santoor. All in all, I love it, and look forward to using it more often.