moon lute v.4

This is another moon lute attempt - this one designed more after the dan nguyet, with a long neck and really high frets. You can see that I reused the body from version 2. The pegs are actually friction pegs, and with the fairly low string tension they work pretty well even though they aren't tapered. The strings are 50# and 30# monofilament fishing line. You can bend the strings by pressing down on them, especially the lower notes where there is more slack. It's actually pretty fun to play.

It's pentatonically fretted and I started to miss the other notes and didn't want to have to bend up to them, so I decided to make another fretless instrument.

moon lute v.2

This was my second attempt at a homebrew moon lute/yueqin/gekkin. Version 1 was a rectangular one-piece, also with raised frets. It was actually kind of cool with a banjo-ey sound. The neck was a little too wide, though. Also, the tuners were held in with screws that drove me nuts. I recycled the body into another instrument.