All About Bows Part II: When to Change Your Bow

One of my customers asked me when she should change her Erhu bow. She's been playing her Erhu 5 times a week, 30-60 minutes a day for 10 months already and she was wondering if its time to change the bow already.

Well, I say it depends on each individual actually. Someone who bows with a vengence will wear out the bow faster than someone who's always trying to mimic whisperings. Someone who carefully moves the bow from the pegs to the playing position would do better than one who removes it with a flourish, pulling out a few loose strands of hair in the process.

But here are a few tell tale signs that your bow is due for a change:

1) The Erhu bow is balding.
Unless you are very careful, there are a 101 ways for you to accidentally catch some of your bow hairs. In between the strings near the qianjing area, the corners of the soundbox, the scales on the snakeskin, the strings wound around the pegs and the number 1 bow hair killing machine - fine adjustors. A bow with thinning hair gives a thinning tone and you should change it as soon as possible.

2) Compounds of rosin and sweat are accumulating on your Erhu bow hair.
Especially at the area near the ferrule where you place your right fingers. When the rosin reacts with the sweat on your fingers, it forms a sticky gluey substance on the hairs that is difficult to get rid of. You can try to wash it with non oily dish washing detergent though.

3) You get cackling harmonics when you play your open strings.
Once a customer came to my shop, complaining of a cackling noise when she bows that was not there before. I see nothing wrong with the Erhu bow, thus I changed the bridge and dampener and changed the strings but the noise still persists. Finally I changed the bow and the
noise is gone. Sometimes the rosin reacts with the moisture in the air and forms bigger particles among the bow hairs which you can't see. Again you can try washing your Erhu bow or live with this minor irritation. Somehow the cackling noise is more apparent when you play open strings.

4) Something ain't right but you can't put a finger to it
Sometimes you can't find anything wrong with the bow, but you just feel that its not the same as it was. Go with your instincts.

Don't wait until your bow becomes like this before you change:



Oh, and don't bother about rehairing your Erhu bow unless it has sentimental value. Getting a new Erhu bow is much cheaper than getting it rehaired.

And did I mention that we ship our Erhu bows in custom made postubes that absolutely prevents the bow from damage during shipping? Unless an elephant steps on it.

Aeolian harp

An aeolian harp (or æolian harp or wind harp) is a musical instrument that is "played" by the wind. It is named for Aeolus, the ancient Greek god of the wind.

The traditional aeolian harp is essentially a wooden box including a sounding board, with strings stretched lengthwise across two bridges. It is placed in a slightly opened window where the wind can blow across the strings to produce sounds. The strings can be made of different materials (or thicknesses) and all be tuned to the same note, or identical strings can be tuned to different notes.

Here is an example (wav-file) of the wind playing from the www.harpmaker.net, which builds these instruments.

And here is a clip, by Sarah Deere "Jones Celtic and Aeolian Harp"

All About Bows Part 1: Beijing Styled Bows vs Shanghai Style Bows

A lot of people have asked me how to choose a Erhu bow and I've been procrastinating for a while to write about this.

Well, because I sell Erhu bows and I'm afraid my customers might equate an imperfect bow that they receive, with a lousy bow. The workmanship and quality control of China Erhu bow makers still have a long way to go to match western bow makers, hence the great disparity in the price.

But as long as your new bow feels better than your old bow, its a good bow!

There is basically 2 distinct Erhu bow types:


1) The Beijing bow is a few centimeters longer than the Shanghai bow. (Used to be, now some Shanghai bows are as long as Beijing bows)

2) The Beijing bow has a soft ferrule compared to a hard plasticly ferrule of a Shanghai bow. The ferrule is the point where the bow hairs join to the frog of the bow, or where your left hand middle and fourth finger rests on. Some players who have a very tense right hand feels uncomfortable using the Shanghai bow. By right it should not hurt if you hold the bow correctly, with pressure points on the bow rod rather than grabbing the whole bow.

3) The Beijing bow's ferrule is detachable from the frog of the bow, so you don't need to remove the whole frog from the rod when you need to remove the bow from the Erhu or put the bow back on the Erhu. The Shanghai bow's ferrule is attached to frog of the bow. To remove the bow from the Erhu, you need to unscrew the endpin to detach the frog from the bow rod. But many a times, for a Beijing bow I find that I still need to detach the frog from the bow rod because there is just not enough slack to detach the ferrule from the frog.

4) I find that the Shanghai bow in general feels lighter and more flexible than the Beijing bow.

5) The Beijing bow usually has more bow hair than the Shanghai bow thus it produces a fuller tone. However, more bow hair means you might brush the outer string when you are playing the inner string and vice versa if the distance between the 2 strings is not big enough. You might want to choose another bridge that spaces out the strings more, but then you would need to get use to the increased distance when moving from one string to the other.

Not exhaustive, but all I can think of at the moment.

More on the rod and hair later.

Click here for a list of bows that we stock.

Our bows are shipped in custom-made postubes to ensure that they are not subjected to stress during shipping.

vOICe Java Applet

Voice - is a free online soundscape synthesizer and sequencer. This Java applet allows you to draw your own 64 × 64, 16 grey-tone image and immediately hear the corresponding 64-voice polyphonic visual sound being synthesized on the fly! See and hear how The vOICe mapping works for your input. The 64-channel sound synthesis maps the image into an exponentially distributed frequency interval for a one second visual sound.

An interesting thing, though it is not easy to produce something well sounding.
On this animation page you can see how different images sound.

The best of Theremin

This a great theremin cover of a song by Gnarls Barkley. Just great.

Protect your bow and strings

I had a previous entry titled 'Help! I can't get my Erhu in tune!' about the different types of fine adjustors and one reader commented that the fine adjustors are not very bow friendly. Your bow hairs get stuck in the fine adjustors if you are not careful when storing or taking out.

More recently I had an entry titled 'Sticky Sticky Erhu Strings' about using a piece of paper to protect your strings from the rosin powder on your bow.

The same reader decided to take a bigger piece of paper (A3 size) and fold it into half (instead of into a W) to cover both the strings as well as the fine adjustors. This way your strings are protected from the bow rosin and the bow hairs are protected from the fine adjustors.



Killing 2 birds with 1 stone.

Thank you Sam for your suggestion.

Hang - a steel drum

A hang is a steel drum. It is struck with the fingers, the sound is generally much softer than a steel drum, and can be played in many ways to produce a large variety of sounds.

The hang was devleoped in 2000 in Bern, Switzerland by Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer (PANArt Hangbau AG) and introduced at Musikmesse Frankfurt in 2001. Its name comes from the Berne dialect word for hand.

The hang is typically played resting on the players' lap, and can also be played on a stand. The inner note on the bottom dome is the bass note, and when played in a dampened way allows change in pitch. Seven (in the bass version) or eight (treble version of the Hang) notes are tuned harmonically around a central deep note. The hemispheres are hardened by a process known as gas-nitriding.

In the spring of 2006 the hangmakers presented a new generation of Hanghang (plural form of Hang). The new instruments have an upper surface of annealed brass and a ring of brass around the circumference.

Here is an introduction video to Hang:

A couple of videos of a good hang drummer

Hang Drum- Manu Delago

And a great video of Hang Drum played live by Beate Gatscha.

Dub Selector!

If you like dub - Infinite Wheel - Dub Selector is definitely a worthwhile flash game. It has 9 parts, all of them generate some dub and reggae tunes. I personally like vol. 3 and vol. 8 Burning Babylon. Takes some time to get used to, and sounds pretty well after a while. Enjoy :)

The Instrument Behind 'Er Quan Ying Yue' (or 'Moon Reflected on Second Spring')

'Er Quan Ying Yue' or 'Moon Reflected on Second Spring' as it is commonly known to non-Chinese, is a beautiful and moving piece of Erhu music.

It is written by a man called Hua Yan Jun (or blind man Ah Bing) in the 1950s. At the time when he wrote this piece of music, he was already blind. According to relatives and neighbours, Ah Bing barely earned enough everyday to feed himself by performing in the streets. Everyday when he goes back to his home in a small alley, he will play this moving but sorrowful and pitiful tune.

I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with the story of Ah Bing already. But it seems not everyone knows that 'Er Quan Ying Yue' is played using a special type of Hu called Er Quan Hu or Er Quan Qin.

My new stocks of Er Quan Hu by Wan Qi Xing just came in so I thought I'll take this opportunity to talk a little bit more about Er Quan Hu.

Er Quan Hu is actually an in between of the Erhu and Zhonghu. It has a slightly larger and longer resonator than the Erhu and the snakeskin used is also thicker than the Erhu. I've read somewhere that the height of the Er Quan Hu is slightly longer than the Erhu but the ones I have seem to have the same height as the Erhu.

Here is a picture of a Erhu, Er Quan Hu, Small Zhonghu and Big Zhonghu lined together.




The Er Quan Hu is strung with special strings called Er Quan strings and are tuned to G D (sometimes A E). They are slightly thicker than Erhu strings.

It is quite a lovely instrument actually, at least the ones that I have. It plays like a Erhu and sounds like a Zhonghu. The bass is not as deep and booming as the Zhonghu, but the notes are rounder and the higher registers are clearer. Click here for a video clip.

Well, some asked if they could achieve the same effect playing 'Er Quan Ying Yue' with a Zhonghu rather than Er Quan Hu. I made a recording playing the same thing using the small Zhonghu and the big Zhonghu. Listen for yourself here: small Zhonghu, big Zhonghu.

They sound like, well, Zhonghus playing 'Er Quan Ying Yue'.

Here is the Er Quan Hu by Wan Qi Xing that we just stocked:


Click here to purchase the Er Quan Erhu.

Oh, and here are the links to the tune 'Er Quan Ying Yue' if you haven't heard it before:
- Youtube video by Song Fei
- Audio recording by unknown artist

Car Music Project

The project began in 1994 as an attempt by Bill Milbrodt to "turn a car into music that can be expressed in written form and, therefore, performed and interpreted by more than one musician or group of musicians." More specifically, Milbrodt wanted playable musical instruments created from his own car, and wanted them to represent the four instrument families of the traditional orchestra: winds, brass, percussion, and strings. To accomplish his goal, he hired professional auto mechanics to disassemble his car, and commissioned metal sculptor Ray Faunce III to create a series of playable musical instruments from the car's parts. Faunce worked with a team that included musicians, an engineer, a physicist, a glass cutter, and others to create a series of instruments, some of which are "purebred" (only car parts) and some of which are "hybrids" (car parts plus traditional musical instrument parts). The resulting instruments have names like Convertibles and Tube Flutes (winds), Strutbone and Exhaustaphone (brass), Percarsion (percussion, of course), and Tank Bass and Air Guitar (strings). Milbrodt and his team have fully documented the general capabilities and tuning idiosyncrasies of all the instruments.

Here is Bill Milbrodt's Myspace page with several compositions available for listening there.

Here is a video of the band performing at Philadelphia Live Arts Festival in 2005.

Sea Organ in Zadar, Croatia

The Sea organ is an architectural object located in Zadar, Croatia and an experimental musical instrument which plays music by way of sea waves and tubes located underneath a set of large marble steps. It is actually a water organ. The waves create somewhat random but harmonic sounds. The device was made by the architect Nikola Basic as part of the project to redesign the old city coast (riva), and the site was opened to the public on April 15, 2005.

Here are a couple of videos with the sound of Adriatic sea playing.

Sticky Sticky Erhu Strings

I'm sure everyone has problems with sticky strings.

When you store your bow on your Erhu, the rosin on your bow inadvertently touches your strings and cause your strings to be sticky. It's a pain to do slides and finger position changing if your strings are sticky.

To prevent the strings from getting sticky, you can put a cloth over your strings when you store your bow.

The cloth can also be used to wipe the dirt and grime off the strings and your Erhu resonator after use.

An alternative is to cover the strings with a piece of paper. This is something that I did when I was young.

Take an A4 size paper and fold it like this:

Slip the middle part of what you just created between the strings and your strings are protected against pesky rosin residue.



(If your qianjing is too low you need to cut the A4 size paper smaller)

Ondes Martenot

The ondes Martenot (French for "Martenot waves"; also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales) is an early electronic musical instrument with a keyboard and slide, invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot - a French cellist, a radio telegrapher during the first World War, and an inventor. The instrument is originally very similar in sound to the Theremin. They both used the vacuum tube oscillator as a sound source and were both monophonic, where the Theremin had a sliding scale and no fixed preset notes the Ondes-Martenot had a keyboard and a strip control for glissando and vibrato and an appearance that was familiar to any keyboard player.

The instrument also had a bank of expression keys that allowed the player to change the timbre and character of the sounds. A later (1938) version of the instrument featured microtonal tuning as specified by the Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore and the musician Alain Danielou.

The Ondes-Martenot was quickly accepted and eventually had a wide repetoire, works were written for the instrument by composers such as Edgard Varèse, Olivier Messian, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Maurice Jarre.

Here you can see how it works.

Here is a great video of Claus Simon performing Olivier Messiaen works on Ondes Martenot.

Zi Zu Diao

I've been very busy these few days and have no time to update the blog.

So I'll leave you with a video clip of yet another Mooncake festival performance by four talented young musicians that took place yesterday at OUB centre.

Incidentally, the pipa and erhu player are holding their own solo recitals sometime next month.



Here's them doing "Zi Zu Diao":

Thumb piano!

In Zimbabwean music, the mbira is a musical instrument consisting of a wooden board to which staggered metal keys have been attached. It is often fitted into a deze that functions as a resonator. Mbira performances are usually accompanied by hosho. The Mbira is usually classified as part of the lamellophone family of musical instruments.


Robert Patterson Collier Flickr set shows a great deal of Thumb Pianos, or Kalimbas, or Mbiras.

Carol of the Bells (array mbira)

African Harp and Thumb Piano Ensemble

Paco Sere plays mbira

Visual Accoustic - java music machine.

VisualAccoustic - a wonderful Java Applet, which allows you to play several instruments including Piano, Strings, Flute, Bass, Harp, etc. by moving your mouse on the canvas. You control delay, volume and pitch, and the program does the harmony ;) Combinations of low volume bass and flute or sax sound pretty nice.

Laser Harp

A laser harp is an electronic musical instrument consisting of several laser beams to be blocked, in analogy with the plucking of the strings of a harp, in order to produce sounds. It is famously used by Jean Michel Jarre in his concerts.

The term "laser harp" and the first working laser harp were invented and made by Geoffrey Rose in 1976.The first model was constructed with a matrix of 5 X 5 laser beams in an octagonal frame. It has subsequently been used in a number of different designs, including a MIDI version invented by Philippe Guerre, and a recent one created by Yan Terrien. They have also been used in public art installations such as those created by Jen Lewin on display at Lincoln Center in 2000 and Burning Man 2005.

A laser harp is generally built using a single laser, splitting its beam into an array of beams in parallel or fan arrangement. When a beam is blocked, this is detected by a photodiode or photoresistor, which is connected to electronics activating the relevant note. Playing the actual sound is usually handled by connecting the laser harp to a synthesizer, sampler or computer.

Here is a video of Jean Michel Jarre performing his Rendez Vous 2 on a laser harp. And if you want to build one yourself - here is a guide. And watch your eyes ;)

Balalaika!

The balalaika is a stringed instrument of Russian origin, with a characteristic triangular body and 3 strings (or sometimes 6, in pairs).

Here is a video of a russian folk song played on two balalaikas - a bass and a prima.



And here you can see, that balalikas are not only about folk songs.

The Greatest Invention for Erhu Yet!

I think this product warrants an entry by itself. Firstly, because it is such a fabulous product. Secondly, because we just restocked them.

I'm talking about the black butterfly mute for the Erhu.



It is a nifty little device that mutes 90% of the volume of your Erhu. Listen to the difference in volume here!

It works by stopping the vibrations the strings send to the snakeskin through the bridge. Usually people put a pencil or dongle above the bridge to mute the sound of the Erhu. But the problem is that the pencil or dongle changes your left hand finger positions because it 'shortens' the string. Also, it is barely audible from the 2nd position onwards, unless you bow very hard.

With the mute you can play your Erhu normally, without compromising on your bowing or fingerings.

This is especially useful when you feel like practicing the Erhu at night. Not everyone lives in places where you have to drive to reach your neighbours. And you still have your family members and pets to contend with.

So on your way to playing like Min Huifen, get one of these and put a smile on the face of the people around you.

(Although you should play without the mute whenever you can, to hear how you really sound like)

*I read somewhere that the mute actually improves the volume and tone of your bowing, especially for those self conscious people. When you are conscious of your playing, you usually try to play softer or try to control your bowing. Overtime, your tone will become thin and soft. With the mute, you will try to play as loud as possible to be heard, unconsciously training your right hand......

Resonant Chamber

This is just an amasing video by Animusic project. "Resonant Chamber" features a ton of steampunk strings combined in an amazing music machine.

Contrabass saxophone

The contrabass saxophone is one of the lowest-pitched members of the saxophone family. It is extremely large (twice the length of tubing of the baritone saxophone, with a bore twice as wide, standing 6 feet four inches tall, or 1.9 meters) and heavy (approximately 45 pounds, or 20.4 kilograms), and is pitched in the key of EE♭, one octave below the baritone.

Especially in its lowest register, the instrument produces a massive and somewhat harsh, foghorn-like tone. Because of its extremely low register (like the contrabassoon), it can be difficult for listeners to perceive individual pitches; instead of hearing a clearly defined melody, listeners may instead hear a series of "buzzy" tones with little pitch definition.

Here is a page with some mp3's of the thing.

Tubax contrabass saxophone

Bazantar - Five String Double Bass

The bazantar is a custom made string instrument invented by musician Mark Deutsch, who worked on the design between 1993 and 1997 (US patent 5883318 issued March 16, 1999).

The bazantar is a five string double bass with 29 sympathetic and 4 drone strings and has a melodic range of five octaves. It is designed as a separate housing for sympathetic strings (to deal with the increased string tension) mountable on a double bass or cello, modified to hold drone strings.

Here is a 10 min video by Mark Deutsch himself.

Food, Glorious Food

I realized that there are quite a lot of Singaporeans reading my blog. Singaporeans love good food, especially when they are cheap, so I thought here's my chance to be a Rochor Centre(where my shop is located) food critic, in case anyone decides to drop by for some supplies.

But first, some directions on how to get to my shop. A lot of people who came to my shop for the first time complained that they took quite a while to find out where we are. Click here for a map of our location. Rochor Centre is a poorly designed big complex with little navigation signs. Just look out for the Church of Lady Lourdes and we are located right opposite the church.

Below our shop is a coffeeshop named Coffeetown. (For non-Singaporean readers, a coffeeshop is a place where you have different food operators selling different kinds of cuisine) In that small little coffeeshop are 4 stalls worth mentioning. The first is a stall that sells very good roast duck, roast pork and charsiew rice. The rice is served with a bowl of soup that is very tasty. The soup usually runs out by afternoon. That is the most popular stall in the coffeeshop. Ask for some of their dark soya sauce to go with the rice. Its sweet and fragrant and they don't give to their customers unless they ask.

The second stall is one selling homemade Bao and Dim Sum. The Baos are freshly made in their stall everyday. They have interesting creations like coffee Bao and '3 in 1' Bao that is filled with Tau Sar, Lian Rong and salted duck yolk! Its a little too sweet for my taste though, but the Big Bao is fabulous. (Baos are steamed buns with different kind of fillings) The stall was featured in the newspapers and had very long queues for subsequent weeks. The euphoria has since died down and you can buy the Baos without queuing now.

The third stall is the Malay stall. Their fried chicken rice is very popular. The chicken is crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. The chilli paste that comes with it is very hot and spicy and goes very well with the rice!

The last stall is the mixed vegetable stall. Their dishes are actually quite tasty with a home cook feel. You get the feeling that their raw meat and vegetables are cleaned thoroughly before cooking.

Just around the corner is another coffeeshop named Kopitiam. Here you can find the famous Song Fa Bah Kut Teh that used to be opposite Bugis MRT station. Another stall worth mentioning is the braised duck rice stall. The soup that comes with it is savoury and full of chinese herbs. Check out their mutton soup as well.

Bon Appetit!

Rubber to Eradicate Erhu Wolf Tones

Read this trick somewhere about reducing wolf tones and noise from your Erhu.

Cut a 6mm cube from a piece of rubber eraser.



Place the cube below the bridge in between the strings above the felt dampener. You may want to experiment it with varying positions and varying thickness of the dampener. (Or even remove the dampener completely)

I tried it and yes it does reduce wolf tones and noise of the Erhu. But like the Rubber band trick, I felt that it removes the edge in the tone. And someone who tried it commented that the timbre of the tone is flattened.

Apparently "All good cellos have wolf tones" so they say. There was a discussion on the net about a Stradivarius cello with a terrible wolf tone as well.

I don't know if the same applies to the Erhu. But that is sure a good way of consoling yourself if you got a Erhu that howls.

Surgical Plaster on Erhu

A lady who plays Erhu came to my shop this afternoon. She told me she reads my blog and views my youtube videos as well. She said that she appreciates what I have done and have learned a couple of things from them too.

Well, I appreciate her for letting me know that too. Its good to know that people are reading your stuff and they actually benefit from it as well. It makes what you do more meaningful and makes you want to do more. So thank you Ms Sorry-I-didn't-get-your-name for dropping by.

One of the things that we talked about this afternoon is putting a strip of surgical elastic plaster on the snakeskin protector of the Erhu. I remembered this was one of the first things my Erhu teacher asked me to do when I started playing the Erhu. There are 2 purposes for doing this:

The first is to reduce the 'cluck cluck' sound when the bow rod hits against the snakeskin protector when you are bowing. I think it is a non issue if you are bowing correctly. You press the bow rod against the sloping side of the snakeskin protector when you are bowing the outer string so theoretically the bow rod should not be bouncing around. My youtube videos on how to hold the bow and how to bow might help a little. But for some people who can't seem to get rid of that another noise, this is one way of reducing it.

The second purpose is rather good though. It creates a little more friction and gives you more bow control. This especially useful when you are playing a long note softly(Try the first note of Air on the G string by Bach). Without the plaster and with less friction, your bow seems to reach its ends faster.

This is how it looks like:



It would be better if you can find wider strip of surgical plaster. One that is big enough to cover the snakeskin protector such that both sides taper down. This way you will have less possibility of getting 'dog ears' as your bow rubs against the plaster.

Changing Bridge on the Erhu

Someone asked me if you should loosen the strings when changing the bridge on your Erhu. Well, you just need to loosen the tension the string exerts on the bridge by pulling up the strings with your fingers like this:



So that you do not scrape off the scales on the snakeskin accidentally with the bridge.

On the topic of bridges, well, there are so many things to talk about. But someone asked me today why some bridges (of the same type) are significantly taller than others. If your Erhu snakeskin is a little sagging and sounding like its humming rather than singing, a taller bridge might bring back some clarity and brightness. Otherwise, a shorter bridge might be better.

Be sure to adjust the thickness of your felt if you change your bridge.

Erhu Fingering Markers

For those just starting out on their Erhu, this is quite a useful thing for you:


Its an adhesive transparent strip with markings to show where you place your left hand fingers for different notes. The fingerings are in the key of G.

You have to move your qianjing up first before sticking the strip on the neck of your Erhu. Afterwhich, you move the qianjing down to the position just above the 5/2 markings.

You should remove it(or avoid looking at it) once you get the feel of the finger positions so that you do not become too dependent on the markings.

It'll be dreadful if you perform a whole song with your eyes glued to neck of the Erhu.

I'm giving them away free. Just pay for the postage and handling fees (~ US$2 ). Interested parties please email me at tansungwah@eason.com.sg with the subject title "Erhu finger labels". If you're in Singapore, just drop by our shop and pick it up.

The Clip on Chromatic Digital Tuner

This is a handy little digital tuner I thought you all might be interested in.

The tuner is fixed onto a clip. The display is can be flipped up and down and rotatable 360 degrees. Thus you can adjust the angle of the display so that it can be read easily when you clip on to your instrument.

Tuner on Erhu

Tuner on Liuqin

You also have an option of tuning using the built in microphone. Tunes chromatically so theoretically you can use it to tune any instrument.

Interested parties can purchase it here.

The one that got away...

As you all know, Eason Enterprises is a family business set up in 1978. We import and sell a lot of Chinese music instruments every year and once in a while, we will lose track of our own inventory.

The other day when I was going through my store, I came across this Aged Rosewood Suzhou Erhu that apparently has been forgotten. I suspect it is one of the earlier works by Wan Qi Xing, a Erhu maker from Suzhou. It didn't have any engravings on it.

I cleaned it up and spent a bit of time setting up the Erhu by giving it new strings, bow and bridge. To my surprise, the Erhu sounds very good. It produces a full bodied tone that is sweet and clear. The high notes come out nice and clean as well. The wood grains look wonderful too.

Here is it:



Anyone interested in this Erhu please email me at tansungwah@eason.com.sg. Comes with accessories like case, extra strings, extra bridges, rosin and fine adjustors. The price is US$325.