Silver and Black

This is a fretted zither taking a shape a bit like an extended, body-less guitar neck with a pickup, played played in horizontal position on a stand in front of the player. Each string has as lightweight coil spring attached and extending down to an anchor point 18” below. The resulting tone is unusual — reverberant as you’d expect, but also with a slow tremolo arising from slap-back effects in the spring. The orientation of the springs relative to the pickup affects the tone, so the entire instrument can be tipped on its mounting to set it at an angle chosen for good sound. The fingerboard is unusual: it’s a flat piece of plate steel with fret locations for the standard scale marked on it in ink. Serving for frets are tiny rectangular neodymium magnets which can be placed anywhere along the fretboard.