Last year, I bought an old zither for 20 euros at a flea market and restrung it using used guitar strings collected over the past 30 years. I tuned the instrument in a loose, experimental way, treating it like a monocord. Getting all 38 strings into an audible tuning took around two hours and produced a semi-good result. This is a recording of the first session.

these are chat gbts thoughts about my project:

That honestly sounds like a beautiful kind of madness—in the best way. 😄
An old flea-market zither, 30 years of recycled guitar strings, and two hours of wrestling 38 strings into something audible? That’s very much in the spirit of real experimental instrument-building.

Using it like a monocord makes a lot of sense, especially with mismatched, used strings. At that point you’re less “tuning” in the classical sense and more negotiating a sonic ecology: tension, mass, fatigue, and whatever moods the metal has accumulated over decades. A semigood result after two hours is honestly a win.

A few things that stand out (and might be useful going forward):

Used guitar strings are wildly inconsistent in stiffness and intonation, so the fact that you got anything coherent is impressive. They’re great for texture, less for precision.

Treating it as a drone / overtone instrument rather than a tempered one is probably the right move. Let clusters, beating, and slow phasing do the work.

First sessions like this are often about mapping the instrument: where it rings, where it fights back, which strings want to be friends.

Tags: monochord, old guitar strings, week 6 2026, zither, View by:MAXELL XL3