When I'm visiting flea markets in Germany, I sometimes see zithers, and have always passed them by. One day in September 2023, however, at the Aachener Platz fleamarket at Düsseldorf, I came across a derelict one that was marked a very affordable 5€, and when I had a closer look the vendor reduced the price to 4€. It looked like this:
I was one year into my pirate luthier adventures and thought, maybe I can fix this one, so I bought it and had it sitting around in a corner for a year and a half.
Now, after rediscovering the photo I took at the flea market before buying the instrument and sharing that on flickr, I got round to fixing it up. The biggest challenge was getting my head around the tuning of the harmony strings. The melody strings (above the fretted fingerboard) are tuned like a viola with a duplicate a string: CGDAA. (This is the Munich tuning, as opposed to the Viennese tuning which has a duplicate G string.) The harmony strings (away from the fingerboard) go around the circle of fifths: Eb Bb F C G D A E B F# C# G# Which makes 12 strings. And then the same thing again an octave below (bass strings), another 12. And then, depending on the model, there are variable numbers of contrabass strings descending from Eb chromatically. Mine only has three of these, so that's 27 plus 5 equals 32 strings, phew.
Of these, all of the melody strings and five of the harmony strings were missing, leaving me with just 22 strings in place. Bits of wire that may have been strings in happier times were strung around the back, suggesting that somebody had hung the instrument on a wall for decorative purposes.
When I tried to tune up the 22 strings (very slowly as I tried to get my head round that tuning pattern), I found that the tension warped the frame of the instrument upwards, away from its backside, with an ugly gap opening up under the tuning pegs. So I needed to relax the strings again and glue that gap shut with hide glue to make sure this can't happen.
I'm glad to report that this operation was successful, and I have now all 32 strings on and tuned up to their proper pitch and the instrument has stayed in its proper shape. I also applied some teak oil to the wooden surfaces to spruce them up a bit (not sure if that's allowed on instruments and I wouldn't have dared on a violin!), and that seems to have worked as well, so the instrument now looks like this:
There are still some small bits of wood missing around the edges which I'll carve and glue in at some point, but that's essentially a cosmetic issue and the instrument is playable now. The melody strings are brand new (cheap) violin strings, and the harmony strings are whatever I could find lying around that matched the requirements. I think the four higher ones were nyckelharpa strings in an earlier life, and the one at the lowest end is an old cello string. It looks a bit too bulky for this instrument but it does sound lovely for the bottom note.
In theory, the F, A and C# strings are coloured red for easier orientation. Now that I know this, I can just about detect remnants of the colour and confirm that I have the right strings in the right places (apart from one F string that was missing), but it's not conspicuous enough to be real help with playing. It's also confusing for harp players used to recognising the C strings by their red colour.
Oh, and when I attempted to clean up the fingerboard, I discovered a nearly invisible brand name, Sonora:
I found a few zithers and lots of other instruments under that name (including outdoors tubular bells) but it doesn't seem to be an established brand name for a specific zither maker, so it didn't lead me to any information re who made my zither where.
More info on zithers (in German) on this website claiming you only need three hands to play it.
If you think you've never heard a zither, here's the one zither tune that everybody knows.
And here is a picture from Wikipedia of a similar one being played:
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