What are the drawbacks to buying the cheaper model?
As all sitars are made by hand, each one is different, so with generic sitars each one has its own different problems. Calcutta is the lowest grade sitar that I will sell as it is a playable instrument that sounds quite nice. I do have to perform about 5 hours work “tweaking” each one I sell. Problems range from sticky tarb (sympathetic string) pegs to fret polishing, string replacement, fret and bridge re-positioning and so on. At the end of all this one has an instrument that plays fairly well and comes with a hard-shell case for a very reasonable price. Sometimes there are blemishes in the instrument’s polish. At the price they fetch there really isn’t the time and money available to put this right as a re-polishing job may take as much as 30 hours. So any blemishes have to be left as they are on Calcutta. This being said, however, the new supplies of Calcutta seem to be better so far as blemishes are concerned. The overall quality is better, too.
